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Stories of Some Shoots 



Copyright 1912 
By ARMS AND THE MAN PUBLISHING CO. 



Published Mag, 1912 



4CI.A319143 

A, ^ i 



STORIES OF SOME SHOOTS 

OR 

The Chronicles of a Gratified Gunner. 

By James A. Drain. 
II 



CHAPTER I. 

THE CHIEF TEMPTS ME. 

THE way it began was thus : The three of us were talking com- 
fortably one evening over our cigars, only mine was a pipe, 
when the question of duck-shooting arose. 

Now I am duck daffy. That is to say, I would go almost any 
distance to get a crack at some good, high-flying ducks. I have gone 
some considerable number of miles, such as across the Continent, to 
try the quack-quack birds. Puget Sound, and the California Coast, 
Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay and a goodly number of points betwixt 
and between have echoed to the "come-and-get-it" voice of my 
shotgun, and resounded to the thwack of a hard-struck duck hitting 
the water on his way from the clouds — sometimes. There were other 
times when the duck went on to the place it had started for before 
I shot. J3ut anyway I succeed in getting a sufficient number of 
them when I am where they are to make the game interesting. 

The subject of ducks arose, I say, and the Chief, a Scotchman 
born, though a "bloomin' cosmopolite," said to me : "What you want 
to do, old man, is to come to Scotland and shoot ducks with me. I'll 
give you five hundred shots in a day at good, swift, high-flying mallards, 
coming to you over a forest and from a hill. Come next year, why 
don't you? (this was in the fall of 1910) and I will guarantee you a 
chance to kill your share of a thousand ducks-" 

Naturally, I sat up at the invitation. "Why," I gasped, "there is 
no place in Scotland where you can find ducks in such quantities as 
that ! What the deuce do you mean ? Of course, it's good of you to 
ask me to shoot with you, but when you talk about ducks in such 
numbers as that, you must be dreaming." 



10 CHAPTER I. 

"Not at all," laughed the Chief, his eyes twinkling compassionately 
upon me. "I expected to get a rise out of you on that, so I'm not 
surprised. You just come over, my boy, and I will deliver the goods." 

The Colonel, who had been an interested but silent member of 
the party, spoke up at this point, as if he felt some of the incredulity 
which was still in my mind and was desirous, as he always is, of 
making easy the way to good sport for those who love it: "No, Jim, 
the Chief is not stringing you. He'll do what he says. He raises 'em 
by hand, and they're counted before as well as after shooting." 

"What ! Tame ducks !" I gasped. "Not on your life," responded 
the Scotchman. "If you can find any ducks in other places that take 
any more killing than mine, I shall be glad to hear of them, that's 
all. They are wild mallards and they will dodge shot as frequently 
as do their thick-feathered brethren the world over. You just come 
over next year and I'll show you." 

"Well, Chief," I answered him, "I'm going to try to take you up 
on that offer. An experience of the kind you suggest would round 
out my duck shooting career in grand style. It would make anything 
I've ever done before this look like a penny ante poker game along- 
side, of Wall Street's best efforts. 

"I gather, of course, that these ducks will be your own property 
and that by shooting any number of them we shan't be depriving other 
sportsmen of an opportunity for their own good times. Wherever I 
have shot I have always lived up to the bag limit and I never have 
killed over fifty ducks in a day, though if I had hit all I have shot at 
I would have killed a few more than that on some occasions, I'll ac- 
knowledge. When I come to think of it I believe I have business in the 
British Isles next year, and the longer I consider the case the more 
convinced I become that that business is of such an imperative char- 
acter that I shall be compelled to go abroad about — about — what time 
did you say the ducks would be ripe?" 

"Well, from the middle to the latter part of October. But if you 
are coming you ought to get there earlier so you could have some 
deer stalking, and take a try at the grouse, black-cock, pheasants and 
partridges." 

"You are raising the limit, old fellow," I said. "I would not give 
a hang to shoot a deer. I haven't shot one for a long time, though I 



THE CHIEF TEMPTS ME. 11 

used to be rather gone on it. I haven't pointed a rifle at a deer since I 
lost my right hand ten years ago and I wouldn't walk across the 
street to kill a deer. But the birds — and especially those ducks — call 
to me. I surely will come if I can possibly arrange it. You let me 
know what the proper time will be and if it lies within the power of 
one James, plain American, to sail the blue seas, and land on Britain's 
shores to bust the ducks, I'll be there. 

"By the way, what guns ought I to bring?" 

"On that score, of course," returned my impending host, "you will 
have to suit yourself, but I should say as long as you have to shoot 
with one hand, you ought to bring two automatic shotguns. You 
will find three or four hundred shots a day from a twelve-gauge with a 
good heavy load a little trying, I imagine, if you fire them from a 
double gun. I'll look out for ammunition and furnish a loader for you 
and all that. All you need to bring is two automatic shotguns, your 
shooting clothes, and, of course, whatever rifle you prefer to use on 
the deer." 

This was the beginning of it. The talk occurred in the winter of 
1910 at my house in Washington, where the Colonel and the Chief 
were spending an evening with me. 

You might have expected me to forget the conversation with its 
attendant invitation almost immediately — if you are crazy — otherwise 
you may be quite sure that sleeping or waking the thought of that 
suggested expedition was never quite out of my mind. 

I planned and I hoped and I worked for it as a boy struggles to 
save his first money to get Fourth-of-July fireworks. I almost came 
to the point of feeling sure I would die before the time came around, 
much as I used to feel when I was a little shaver and counted the 
long months between me and Christmas. But nothing happened 
except good things. My business went along well, two or three new 
clients with reasonable retainers in their hands appeared as it were 
out of a clear sky, and by midsummer of 1911 dalliance with the 
ducks began to loom large in the fall foreground. 

The Colonel and I used to talk it over together. He is one of the 
most sympathetic men I have ever known. He wanted to go, too, 
but it was impossible, so he took out his wishing in helping me get 
ready. 



12 CHAPTER I. 

Letters came along from the Chief, judiciously dropped in every 
month or so, reminding me of the promise to come, remarking upon 
the word he had received from his head keeper of the health and 
prosperity of the birds and beasts. I finally settled upon September nine 
as the earliest date I could leave, and I decided to honor the new 
great liner, Olympic, with my presence for the voyage over. 

Up to the very second the big ship was nursed out of her dock and 
headed down New York Bay to the Narrows by the fussy little tugs 
swarming around her like flies around a gray-hound, I was afraid 
that something would happen to make the trip impossible. But my 
luck held, and with a serene conscience and high hopes I headed for 
those ducks. 

Most of you have sailed the blue seas over. An ocean voyage is 
no novelty to you, though very few as yet have had a chance to 
sail on such a ship as the Olympic. As long as a big city block, 
almost 900 feet, 45,000 tons or over, ten or eleven decks or so, with 
electric elevators, a swimming pool, and all of those luxurious ap- 
pointments which the modern sea-traveler seems to require to make 
him forget that he is not ashore, the Olympic has. She is more 
like a great floating city hotel than a boat. I confess to liking the 
small ones better. You are nearer Old Ocean then and do not have 
to reconstruct your ideas to feel that you are afloat. This presup- 
poses naturally that winds and waves do not disturb your internal 
economy to misery and revolt. 

However, I have never been sea-sick — that is a straight statement 
and not a stock phrase— so that may account for my desire to be a 
little more at one with the water than is possible on a colossal ship 
like the Olympic. She is certainly a beauty, if you go in for big boats, 
and the voyage over, mostly spent on deck with the subterfuge of a 
deck chair and a book as a cloak for dreams of the days to come, 
made the time from New York to Plymouth slip along until almost 
before I knew it I was preparing to set foot on Albion's shore. 

Sweet, soft, September days at sea; what can excel them? And 
then if you are fortunate enough to have in between, as I did, a 
good stormy day and night of driving winds and whipping spray and 
tumbling waves, you have just the background for serener enjoyment 
of the glorious sun, the smiling seas, the tingling, salt-tinged ozone, 
and the swift surge of old blood made new. 



THE CHIEF TEMPTS ME. 13 

As I leaned over the rail high above the bobbing tender which 
was to take me ashore at Plymouth, a steward calling my name 
proved to be the bearer of a letter from the Highlands. In it the 
Chief said: "Waste no time. Come on as fast as steam will carry 
you to the deer forest of Benmore where I await you, and where 
the stags want shooting beyond all expression. You ought to need 
no telling, though you may, that Scotch deer forests are the best in 
the world and Benmore is not the worst of these. Hurry, hurry, 
hurry. The deer are plentiful, the grouse and the pheasants and the 
partridges are in abundance, and the ducks, though not so good as I 
could wish, will still, I believe, give you all the sport you can wish 
for. But of all things do not linger, because the season is now on, 
and each day of delay is a day wasted." 

There were other things in the letter; what trains to take, where 
to have my traps sent and a crowning word which said : "Come 
quickly on ; keen for the killing." 

England's green fields and close-cropped hedges never seemed more 
fair to me, though the natives said the unparalleled dry season had 
taken something from that indescribable freshness of color inseparably 
associated in one's mind with the thought of the land of our British 
cousins. 

London's roar was tuned to a more hearty welcome than ever, and 
though I have always loved the big city by the Thames, one could 
scarcely say I halted there. I merely hesitated on my way to Scotland, 
to greet my family and to make a few necessary purchases before I 
took the night express for Inverness. 

In the small, though comfortable and quite cosy Scotch sleeping 
carriage I awoke early, and from my window caught my first welcome 
glimpse of the Scotch hills; the Highlands at last. 

Scotland was a new land to me, or it should have been, but new it 
never seemed. I awoke and gazed forth, not a stranger in a strange 
land, but as one among familiar and longed for and well loved 
surroundings. 

At Inverness I had breathing time and a breakfast hour before 
the branch train which was to take me farther into the hills could 
quite make up its mind to start. In the station hotel oat-meal 
"parritch," with real cream, bacon and eggs — real bacon — you know 



14 CHAPTER I. 

the kind they have over there, marmalade, hot scones, and almost 
coffee, gave a foundation for the pipe which drew well and kept 
burning with an incense sweeter than ever was offered to the most 
glorious gods. 

The British system of handling baggage without checks required me 
to look for my trunk, a large steamer trunk, it was, and though I 
had subsidized a porter to care for it, I made myself known to the 
station-master, a man of import here. Without doubt, to be station- 
master at Inverness is a dignified duty. Mackey, in high hat and 
frock coat, to whom my friend had written letters asking him to look 
out for me, was the station-master. He went gladly to supervise my 
preparations for departure. At the luggage van for a moment the 
trunk seemed to be lacking, but in response to Mackey's query the 
guard on the luggage van said, with that thick though pleasing 
Scotch burr which was soon to become so familiar to me: "Wull ye 
be meanin' the big Yankee box?" to which I answered: "Yes, a big 
Yankee box." 

"Aye; uts here, all richt, safe an' soond an' labeled for Larrig." 
Lairg being the station at which I was to descend. 

And here I pause overwhelmed by the impossibility of reproducing 
by any means within my power that Scotch dialect which is like to 
no other tongue in the world, and yet withal so fascinating in its 
quaintness. 

Mackey saw me into the rear glass-bound compartment of a first- 
class car, bade me a good journey and good hunting and was away 
upon more important employment, and the little train was soon also 
away on its slow journey to the further Highlands. 

Its way lay along Moray Firth, then by Cromarty Firth; by loch 
and over burn, winding and twisting and turning to follow the ebb 
of the sea until our sturdy little locomotive took the bit in its teeth, 
as might a shaggy Scotch pony, and made straight for the hills. 

There is such a thing as Scotch mist. It may be you have heard 
of it. It might be called rain by some, but not by those who have 
known the Oregon mist or the soft, but "dry" rain of Puget Sound. 
'Twixt gray and graceful showers the sun winked out smiling to think 
it had power enough to interpose a glimmer upon a day evidently 
intended by the All-Wise to be a misty one. 



THB CHIEF TEMPTS MB. 15 

Upon the platforms of the frequent little stations the natives flocked 
in their Inverness capes or sturdy Scotch tweeds, with thick stockings 
of wool and low shoes, disdaining umbrellas and regardless of the 
rain, with here and there women of their kind under hoods and 
shawls and long hanging capes, and an occasional unmistakable English- 
man, though these last for the most part were clad much as the 
Scotch. 

It gave the proper human atmosphere to the places. It was all like 
coming to a well-remembered land, after a long absence, and yet 
there was in it the spice of the new ; the possibilities of the unexpected 
lurked everywhere. 

The train was a very slow one, but though I was in a hurry to 
arrive I did not seem to care for that, I was so much engrossed in 
all I saw, so keenly alive. 

I saw parties of sportsmen, guns under arms, dogs at heel, in the 
turnip patches, and I wondered what they sought. Later I knew they 
were walking up partridges. I did it myself upon occasion, as I shall 
shortly say. I saw hills, rock-ribbed, bare, that frowned down upon 
the right of way as do our own mountains in the Rockies or Cascades. 

I saw moss-grown, ivy-swathed, squat, low cottages, with thatches 
carefully bound ; I saw conical ricks of oat straw, each capped with an 
individual thatch, carefully guyed down by ropes spread as are those 
which hold a circus tent. I saw sheep, and cattle and horses; more 
sheep than all. I saw little brown ponies between the shafts of two- 
wheeled carts. I saw farm carts, with a big brown single horse 
drawing them, a sturdy man and woman to the right and left walking 
by the animal's head. 

I saw tow-headed children gazing with familiar interest at the 
going train. On, and over all, where the waters of the Firth lapped 
close to the ends of the sleepers, I saw a flock of ducks rise and 
circle and fly away. 

I saw battleships and cruisers and torpedo boats of the British 
Navy, gray and sullen and threatening, lying at anchor in Cromarty 
Firth, which I had thought too small for any such warcraft, but it 
was large beyond their use. 

Climbing, still climbing, we came a little after noon to Lairg, and 
I stepped down upon the graveled platform and went forward to see 



16 ' CHAPTER I. 

my trunk, now for so long as I should stay abroad, a "box." That 
big, Yankee box, slipped gently from the van, and then the train 
steamed on into the mist and left me standing not far from one 
other passenger, and a lone porter. The other man was an English- 
man more used to the ways of the country and besides in more haste 
than I, so he collared the porter first, while I waited. 

With the luggage of the other man the porter crossed the track 
to the station building. I expected him to return, but he did not, so 
I went over and engaged the station-master in conversation. My 
instructions had been that a conveyance would await me at Lairg to 
take me to Benmore, said to be twenty odd miles up in the hills. 

From the railway official, who was courtesy itself, I gained news 
of the motor, which stood humming outside the door. Luckily it 
was one with narrow and deep afterbody, a type which I was often 
to see in Scotland. One seat in front, and two facing inward for 
the full length of the afterbody, say five feet long, in the rear. 
Here my trunk and bag went and at a nod we were off. 

Two miles by a winding road brought us to a white, immaculately 
white, inn which nestled like a snow-colored bird upon the shore of 
the blue and winding loch, curving between two high brown and green 
hills. Here I descended and having the "box" brought into a con- 
venient room in the inn, swiftly changed into heavy shooting clothes. 
Twenty-eight miles even by motor through the mist and over the 
Highlands would be no joke for a man in light city clothes. 

Finished changing, I found my way to the little low-ceiled dining 
room, where before a wide, small-paned window looking out upon 
the Loch I lunched, taking care to stow away, of the simple but 
good food offered, enough to carry me through my ride. 

Then, with raincoat over all, dear old shooting cap pulled low 
over spectacled eyes, which would fog — but what was the difference — 
I climbed to my seat beside the driver, took one last look at the 
Sutherland Arms, white inn, nestling there, another at my "box" and 
bag, tarpaulin covered in the back of the car, touched a match to a 
fresh pipe, and we were off. 



CHAPTER II. 

BEN MORE LODGE. 

IT was up and down hill, mostly up, and the driver apologized for 
the bad roads. To me they seemed passably good, but then I am 
accustomed to American roads. There was not an inch of this way 
which was not made ground, broken stone, pounded hard and firm. 
There were little inequalities, of course, that could not be avoided, 
but on the whole, the entire road was one which in America would 
be called good. Alongside the way as we went, were road makers — 
who might have stepped bodily out of "A Window in Thrums" for 
my delectation— breaking the flints with hammers. Slow-moving, 
"deeleeberate," making every move count, and being mighty careful 
not to count too fast. These all seemed men past middle age. 

As we went our way upward the country became rougher, more 
and more often a stone outcrop, and less and less frequent the 
trees. We came out at last upon rather high land which showed 
many a stone outcrop, was treeless, in places grass covered, in others 
grass and heathergrown, while peat hags glared. 

Do you know what a peat hag is? I did not until I went to 
Scotland, but now I do. You know peat, of course; it is coal in 
its first stages ; black, the product of hundreds, perhaps thousands of 
years of slow growth. Soft in places to the point of mushiness, it 
wears away by the action of the water and holes are gouged out of 
what looks like the solid ground — holes from a pin size to the 
diameter and depth of a biggish house, the walls of the cavity black. 

And water — never except upon the ocean have I seen so much 
water. Burns roaring and tumbling and murmuring and trickling 
down the hills everywhere. Never out of the sound of a stream, and 
lochs of all sizes, forms and descriptions. 

By a heather hill a covey of grouse are treading nervously on their 
toes drawing courage to stand fast within twenty yards as we roar 



18 CHAPTER II. 

by. Over yonder three black cock, magnificent fellows, rear their 
heads and give a preliminary look before they whirl away. There, a 
hare, mate to the jack-rabbit at home, departing in leisurely fashion 
to some new spot; and in green banks, here and there, rabbits, hun- 
dreds of rabbits, popping in and out of burrows, like figures in a highly 
animated pantomime. 

The old motor churned noisily and sturdily on, surely eating up 
the miles with a healthy hunger. I talked very little with the man 
who drove me. My eyes and my thoughts kept me busy. He spoke 
not at all, unless I addressed him, and seemed oblivious of my 
presence. But when I strove to light a pipe against the difficulties of 
the wind of our passage, he stopped without a word and took a match 
box from his own pocket to proffer me the lighted brand, which 
sufficed. 

It was thus I had my first glimpse of that fine courtesy and gentle 
consideration for one's comfort which never thereafter was far from 
me while I was in Scotland. 

The distance measure within told me we had come more than 
twenty-five miles, when, swinging a hill shoulder, I saw to the right 
a longish loch. Beyond it were mountains rising sharply; between 
its end and us two bridges crossing separate streams, the one a large 
flow of water which came from the foot of the loch, the other a 
small one which was quite near. As we drove upon the larger 
bridge I saw near where the loch stream had its source the figures 
of men, and as we approached one of these passed the rod he held to 
another and drew near. It was the Chief, a welcoming light in his 
eyes and a glad smile of greeting on his lips. The last time we had 
met had been at Quebec, in far Canada, and now we clasped hands 
again at the lower end of L,och Ailish at the foot of the Mount 
Benmore. 

Greetings over he told me the day had been so misty that he, no 
guests being present, had cut deer stalking for the time and come 
to try the salmon. He had killed two fine fish, and was not ill- 
pleased with his day. To his question of what I would like to do, 
the time being then about four o'clock in the afternoon, I said, of 
course, "Anything you like." 

"Well," he inquired, "how would it suit you to take a little walk, 



BBNMORB LODGE. 19 

that will let you stretch your legs after the cars, and you may get 
some meat for the pot. The Lodge is about two miles up, and you 
can work in that general direction." 

I acquiesced, and declining the gun which one of the keepers offered 
I had my box taken out and from it drew one of my own guns, 
which was soon assembled, and I was ready for my first try at the 
Scottish grouse. The Chief called "Sandy," a gray-haired and 
stooped gillie, to go with me. 

The minute I stepped off the road I encountered one of those new 
sensations so soon to be multiplied during my Highland visit. What 
looked like firm grass land was real grass, with about two inches 
of moss at its roots, and then from two to six inches of water. Chug, 
chug, swish; not always over the shoe tops, but soon that and some- 
times more. Of course, we were on the low ground, but I found 
even the tops of many grass-grown hills had this mushy, marshy 
formation not unlike the tundra one encounters in Alaska. 

The first grouse I found got up rather wildly and I lost him, and 
another one or two. I was not in good form and I found the car- 
tridges given me would not cause my automatic to function, because 
with the recoil ring on they did not develop enough power. And so 
splashing through an occasional burn, which meant nothing after my 
feet and legs were wet, occasionally getting a shot and picking up a 
few birds, the grouse being much like our own prairie chicken, only 
more swift in flight, I came to the top of a hill, and looked down 
upon the lights of Benmore Lodge, just kindled and twinkling welcome. 

Here I found my host already returned from his fishing. The 
lodge, a long, low, comfortable building, made no pretensions to beauty, 
but it lacked nothing necessary to comfort. Good beds, good baths, 
spacious lounging room with an open peat fire, comfortable easy 
chairs in plenty and well trained servants to supply all one might 
require, were there. 

Dinner was at eight. I expected good plain camp fare, but I found 
a well-appointed table, with spotless linen, good glass and china, 
where the two of us were served by a butler in livery in a style 
quite equal to that one could expect to encounter in town. Nor were 
the dishes offered any whit less appetizing than one would order 
with an unlimited purse and wholesale opportunities. 



20 CHAPTER II. 

From the table, with fragrant cigars glowing, the Chief and I 
made our way back to the rest room, where in long chairs before 
the fire the talk gradually veered around to deer stalking. I remember 
I offered this, when my host said I should stalk on the morrow: 
"Why, I told you in America that I had not shot a deer for a long 
time, that I really did not care to shoot one again. I'll be glad 
enough to go along with you and watch you shoot, but it doesn't 
seem worth while for me to try; besides, I think it would be rather 
a difficult matter for me to hit a deer anyway with one hand." 

The Chief would scarcely hear me out. "You will go out tomorrow 
and stalk, young man. It is what you are here for. After you've 
tried it for two days if you find you don't like it I'll let you off. 
But mark you, I say, unless I am very much mistaken, deer stalking 
is going to appeal to you mightily." 

Curious to me now is the retrospect, as I look back at the mental 
image I had of what deer stalking would be. I rather expected that 
I should be taken to some convenient runway and seated there while 
numerous beaters would drive the deer past me. I saw myself seated 
on a comfortable camp chair, smoking a cigar, singling out the 
likeliest stag in the herd and then — and here I was quite true to 
myself as I saw the situation — I saw myself firing with all the care 
of which I was capable, and with not too much concern observe the 
deer go on untouched. Later on, as my narrative of events will 
disclose, it became apparent that much which I contemplated was a 
mirage and that the country from which it sprung was far removed 
from the land of real Scotch deer stalking. 

I recall that I said to my host on this first night : "Now, this is 
a new game to me. If I am to play it I want you to tell me how. 
Are there any rules?" 

"Few rules," said the Chief, sententiously, "but golden rules: First 
of them; always walk three paces behind your stalker." (I had only a 
dim idea of what a stalker was, but I did not expose my ignorance by 
speaking). "Always," said he, I remember, "walk three paces behind 
your stalker. Suit your movements to his. If he stops, you stop; 
if he goes on, you go on; if he bends low, you bend low; if he gets 
down and crawls, you get down and crawl. Do just as he does unless 
he motions you or tells you to do something else. That is golden 



BENMORB LODGE. 21 

rule number one. Number two is, don't shoot anybody, not even 
yourself. And that's all." 

"Of course, there are other rules, but they will have to be borne 
in upon you by precept, example and practice. No one can tell 
them to you. If you are a duffer you never can learn them in a 
thousand years, but if you are born to be a deer stalker they will 
seem part of your nature before you have seen the last of Benmore." 
I had to be content with this, and with the thought that I had a 
rather large and vague contract before me, I turned in with the 
promise that I should be called when it was time for me to get up. 



CHAPTER III. 



MY FIRST STALK. 



ALBERT, the butler and general handy man — that man could do 
anything from serving a dinner to acting as loader, with running 
a motor car for sauce between — bringing hot water and a cup of 
tea, and laying out my shooting clothes on the chair beside my bed, 
wakened me next morning at an hour which my watch said was 
seven o'clock. I turned out and quickly tubbed and shaved in an 
atmosphere which in spite of the open fire merrily burning in my 
grate was reminiscent of November days in the high hills of Colorado. 
The sun was shining, but as I took a look from my window at the 
mountains I saw signs which made me believe there might be some- 
thing doing in the weather way later on. I was right. There was. 

At breakfast, the Chief said: "You will go with Donald this 
morning." I answered, "All right." That was all. Where I would 
go with Donald, what Donald would do with me, what I would do for 
myself, were questions which I did not ask I left events to speak 
for themselves. Subsequently, as will be disclosed, they spoke, and 
in no uncertain terms. 

After breakfast my host told me he was going in another direction 
from me to stalk in some absolutely unpronounceable place. When 
the All-Wise Creator made all things, he did, I suppose, either create 
or authorize the creation of Gaelic. Devout Scotchmen and Irishmen 
think so. There are others who believe the Devil had a hand in it. 
The place the Chief said he was going to sounded something like 
"Alton-Gallagher." That is what it sounded like to me. What it 
looked like when you spelled it was something altogether different, 
quite another thing, entirely. 



MY FIRST STALK. 23 

I made many a noble resolve while I was in Scotland to learn the 
names of at least a few of the most familiar spots I visited. The 
Gaelic names, I mean. But I was too busy doing other things. Be- 
sides that I only have one brain, and I early discovered that overtax- 
ing this delicate member is an evidence of lack of quality in that 
same brain structure. 

Whenever I spoke of a place with a Gaelic name I just hit the 
high places. I called it "Umph-umph ump-glumph" or something like 
that. 

You should have heard me trying to describe one of my stalks the 
night after I had made it. I believe the Chief would have broken a 
blood vessel if I had not grown so angry at his stupid lack of com- 
prehension. As it was, he laughed until the rafters rang again. 

Well, anyhow, when he said he was going to "What-you-may-call-it" 
I thought I might as well mosey out and see if I could find Donald. 
As soon as I stepped from the threshhold, into the sunshine, a gray- 
eyed, clean-cut young Scotchman moved toward me, and touching 
his cap, said: "The General wull be going wi' me." 

"Is your name Donald?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"Well, then," I answered, "Go ahead; I'm ready. But where's my 
rifle and who has my ammunition?" 

"I have them, sir," said he. We walked on down from the lodge 
by the stables where some ponies were standing. They call them 
ponies, but some of them were pretty fair sized horses. Anyway, 
they were Scotch ponies. They were bridled and had saddles upon 
their backs, and one was pointed out to me — afterwards discovered 
to be the Chief's own — as the one I should mount. I climbed up into 
the comfortable old McClellan saddle which graced this barrel-bodied 
and faithful beast, and following in the footsteps of Donald, who 
moved off on foot, I made my start upon my first stalk in the High- 
lands. 

Donald swung along at a good four miles an hour. I had to put 
my pony, which was a slow walker, into an occasional trot, to keep up 
with him. Passing through the gate which marked the limit of the 
lodge grounds proper I saw back of us two more ponies with a man at 
the head of each, following after. Donald carried my rifle, a Ross 



24 CHAPTER III. 

.280, in a full-length black soft leather scabbard. The rifle was mine, 
but the scabbard was not. We followed a winding well-made path 
by the burnside, skirting the edges of high hills with peaks looming 
over all in the near distance. 

The sun shone brightly down, harbinger of happy days in the deer 
forest of Benmore for the Yankee sportsman who had come so far 
to taste the quality of Scottish bird shooting and then against his 
will had been forced to stalk the deer. 

Scots are silent men; few words suffice for them, especially where 
strangers are concerned, and only the rub of saddle leather, the rattle 
of stones beneath hoofs and nail shod shoes broke in upon the water 
sounds, which the Highlands always offer. From the roaring rush 
of a big burn over its rock-strewn way to the thin tinkle of the tiny 
rill hurrying on to join its big brother, in these hills one need never, 
in fact, one cannot ever — unless he be deaf — get out of the sound 
of the music of the waters to which all songs of Mountain Scotland 
must be written, if they ring true. 

By the pathside, moss everywhere — gray and bronze-brown and green 
and gray-black and gray-green and yellow and purple, forms a resting 
place for baby buttercups, golden-eyed and sweet, neath heather-bells 
swinging in time to the heart-throbs of the fairies. 

All the herbage has colors to delight. Here is a gully; its sides 
black as ink; peat. There another browny-red; granite. In their 
bottoms it may be a burn — a foot or fifty feet wide. Tip-topmost of 
all the hills in front of us Benmore (Highest Hill) the loftiest peak 
in Sutherlandshire ; flanking it, serrated ridges almost as high, cameo- 
cut against the blue, their crests cloud-wrapped and hidden this 
moment, the veil rent and their nakedness staring the next. 

A stern, strange, hard, beautiful, mild, rough, fine, coarse land. 
Not one for weak men or silly women. A place to breed sturdy sons 
and sterling daughters. High Lands indeed. And by their height 
nearer to the Source of All. 

From the first little hill looking backward through gently eddying 
blue pipe smoke, I glimpsed Loch Ailish, where it lay a beautiful 
blue jewel in its emerald-colored, brown overlaid setting, at its upper 
edge the lodge, gray-sided and red-roofed, stern and forbidding on 
the outside as are these hills — if one only looks for outer things — 
but with the warmth of a real welcome for who should pass within. 



MY FIRST STALK. 25 

I had not thought any place or time or situation could fill me with 
so deep, so strong, so pure and unadulterated a happiness. I looked 
upon the view below, and I gloried. I gazed on the other hand and 
saw the mountains before me to be scaled, and I gloried. It was 
good to be alive. At the moment a few gentle raindrops fell. It was 
as if the high hills had said: "We baptize you thus to be brother 
on probation with us. If you prove yourself worthy you shall be 
full brother." 

It did me good to see Donald walk. There was no effort. He 
moved on like a beautiful machine. One glance was enough to tell 
me that he could keep to that gait all day and all night if need be, 
up hill and down dale. It is a grand thing to be a good walker and 
thus be prepared to take out one's spite on all man's mechanical 
contrivances conceived to carry one places. 

Winding on, my eyes drinking up the good sights to see, my ears 
losing no beautiful sound, my imagination full of the real atmosphere 
of the place, and my mind absorbed in it, far from all thoughts of 
deer or deer stalking, I saw Donald step aside upon a heather mound, 
and unfasten the case of the long telescope which hung at his left 
side suspended by a strap over the other shoulder. 

Seeing him prepare to look, I reached for my field glasses that I 
might also "see what there was to be seen. Donald, sitting down upon 
a little hillock, extended the telescope to its length, thrust the native 
wood cane he carried into the ground for a 'scope-rest, and looked 
at the slope of a hill perhaps a mile and a half to our left front. 

When I had fixed my glasses upon the same spot there leaped into 
view in their circle, it might be fifty deer, feeding, lying down, or 
moving peacefully about. Donald said nothing; nor did I. To get 
a better look I started to descend from my saddle. One of the 
gillies was instantly forward at my bridle rein. I, too, sat down upon 
the hillside and looked long and intently at the distant deer. They 
were unaware of us or oblivious of our presence at that distance 
and we could gaze as long as we chose. Donald said nothing; I said 
nothing. Five minutes passed ; ten, maybe, then he slowly, de- 
liberately closed his glass, section by section, and with a thoughtful 
air slipped it back into its case; contemplatively he pulled the cap 
over the end thereof and buckled it; then he rose, quite slowly, to 



26 CHAPTER III. 

his feet and said in a low voice : "I'm thinkin' there's na shootable 
staug in that lot, sir," and passed on. I silently mounted and followed. 
Soon the trail began to zig-zag up a sharp slope which formed the 
side of a peaked mountain. Part way up, at a good vantage point, 
Donald stopped and repeated the performance with the telescope. 
Later on I found this was called "spying" ; a perfectly satisfactory 
name, it is, too. While I sat on my pony, mildly wondering what 
would come next, he went back and talked to his two companions, 
the gillies, who accompanied us. 

As they stood with their heads close together talking in low tones, 
the rumbling of their murmured conversation punctuated at almost 
regular intervals with interrogative grunts, "huh, humph," might have 
marked them as conspirators plotting the most fiendish crime. But 
Donald was merely laying out the plan for the day. Leaving them, 
he came back to me and said, pointing up toward the summit of 
the mountain : "We'll be walkin' up there, sir." 

I promptly got down out of the saddle and fell in the prescribed 
three paces to the rear of Donald. One of the gillies swung in 
behind me, the other took charge of the three ponies and started for 
a sheltered place further down the hill. The wind was blowing on 
the spine of the mountain, and one could easily get very cold when 
standing still. I soon acquired the knowledge that one could just 
as easily become very warm while walking. 

I had on heavy shoes, fortunately hobnailed, heavy woolen under- 
clothing, a thick flannel shirt, close knit woolen stockings, pulled 
over a pair of woolen socks, and a Burberry near-waterproof shoot- 
ing suit over all. 

The mountainside rose steeply; where it was not rough with broken 
stone it was slippery with peat hags. I was soft from the week 
aboard ship and the idleness of a railway journey. We had not 
traveled very far until I found there was difficulty in filling my lungs 
with a sufficient amount of air to keep me going forward. Steadily 
Donald moved upward. I remembered the golden rule to keep three 
paces behind him and though I found it hard, I made up my mind 
I would die upon the mountainside rather than fall back or cry for 
mercy. 



MY FIRST STALK. 27 

You understand that when we commenced to walk we left the path 
and assailed the slope where there was no made way. Fine, noble, 
rocky peaks and ridges rose before us. Ridge on ridge and terrace 
on terrace quite as massive as any high mountain ranges I have ever 
seen. 

At intervals — they seemed very long intervals — Donald would stop 
and again spy. At such times, while I had the energy, I reached 
around and took my own faithful Warner and Swasey binoculars from 
their case at my hip and looked in the direction toward which I saw 
his 'scope pointed. 

On the low ground as we got higher I picked up a number of 
deer at a distance. Each time after a pause, so short that it seemed 
to me we had scarcely stopped before we started on again, the 
upward movement continued. At one of these stops I looked back 
at the three ponies huddled together with the attendant gillie at their 
heads. Not again during all the hard, gruelling first day of stalking 
should I see those faithful burden bearers, though of this I was 
unaware at the moment, which was quite as well. 

Over the sharp and loosely flung rocks of every size, across grassy 
slopes wet and slippery, through peat hags dug deep in the yielding 
turf, upward and yet upward we toiled. At any rate, I toiled. My 
leader's slender gray-green clad legs seemed as insensate and in- 
vincible to fatigue as steel springs. My heavy shoes, too new for 
comfort, were stiff and punished me cruelly. It was grievous labor. 

I lost my first wind; reached and with falterings grabbed my second; 
lost that in turn and groped for my third. It was not there, and 
ever and ever the top seemed further away. I dared not look at it, 
because the distance seemed to increase instead of lessen at each 
glance. All I could do was fix my burning gaze on Donald's nether 
extremities and follow on. 



CHAPTER IV. 

IXUSIVE STAGS. 

WHEN at last we reached the top my legs were as wabbly as if 
they were filled with water, and the labored breaths I drew 
seemed to me as noisefully come by as those of a wind-broken 
horse. Now I was warm ; more than warm. I was hot under my heavy 
clothing after this strenuous climb, but a moment after we topped the 
crest emerging fairly into the embrace of a blast of such wintry tem- 
perature that it carried with it stinging little particles of sleet, I felt my- 
self as cold as Shackleton when he prodded round so close to the South 
Pole. 

The freezing wind went through me like sharpened icicles, and in 
a few minutes I was shivering. In the storm it was impossible to spy 
for deer, and Donald, no doubt, struck with compassion for my pitiable 
state moved to the partial shelter of a little dip in the top and here 
with my back to the wind I fought with my discomfort, recalling for 
my heartening, the hours of agony I had known in my first essays in 
other days, before lungs had a chance to expand and muscles to harden 
to the hard tasks of hill and mountain. 

The gillie from the rear came up to Donald when we stopped and 
another whispered conversation ensued. I should say it was half an 
hour or more we waited in that windswept space, though it seemed 
hours to me. At length my stalker came to me saying as he pointed 
almost into the teeth of the wind and toward the far slope of the 
mountain: "There's a shootable staug doon there, sir, but I'm thinkin' 
we canna' get at him. We'll just go doon here, sir." 

"Doon here" was the slope of the mountain to our right, where it 
went, I should say, 2,000 feet, steeply, oh, very steeply, down to the 
shore of a loch, whose waters looked black where the wind had not 
spun the wave crest into spindrift white as snow. 

The slope was a grassy one, as steep as the roof of a house, almost 
as sheer a drop as the side of a house, in fact. Underneath the grass 



ELUSIVE STAGS. 29 

was water and slippery earth. On top of it water and slithering sleet. 
I congratulated myself on the forethought, almost inspiration, as I was 
ignorant of the country, which had given hob nails to my shoes. Slide 
and creep and slide we went down, down, down to the bottom of it. 

On the more level land at the foot of the sharp slope, peat hags and 
rocks, and every gully held a burn and every burn full of wet, wet 
water. At the lower level the sleet was rain. The wind ripped and 
roared, its velocity always high, its direction changing in the wink of 
an eye a quarter way round the compass. Bad stalking weather, to be 
sure, for one could never tell when a beast might catch our wind. 

Now there came four or five miles of muck, muck, climb and slide, 
and trudge and wade, through broken ground, mostly across the wind, 
then finally we swung around until it blew squarely in our faces — when 
it did not change its mind and switch us from the sides. 

In all this tramp no word was spoken. Occasionally Donald would 
stop to spy, but it was not much use. His glass would fog although 
he nursed it carefully under a big red handerchief, and I had long 
since giving up trying to spy anything for myself through my glasses. 

Suddenly Donald stopped. So did I. He motioned me forward with 
an inviting forefinger. When I came up, wondering what was 
toward, he said in a husky voice but in accents of greatest respect : 

"Wad the General be after having lunch noo?" The General would, 
and said so. 

There was an especially nasty peat hag near, and in the lee of its 
further side there seemed some possible shelter. Donald tore up some 
handfuls of heather and placed them upon the stark, black mud, and 
here, with my back to the wall I sat down, while the gillie coming up 
spread upon my knees the contents of the canvas haversack which he 
carried. 

I was greeted upon assuming a sitting posture by one small but 
vigorous and extremely frigid stream of water, probably dirty, which 
gushed from the overhanging bank above my head and gaily coursed 
its way down my spinal column. I was so wet before that that a little 
water made not much difference, and I merely leaned forward suffi- 
ciently until the stream cleared my collar and hit me in the middle of 
the back. 



30 CHAPTER IV. 

Then to the lunch which, praise be, was good. Sandwiches of fresh 
bread and sweet butter, cold breast of grouse, scones spread with rasp- 
berry jam, sponge cake with raisins, and last, but lisp it not least, a 
Perier waterbottle full of Scotch whiskey. The men sat about twenty 
feet from me in the partial shelter of another hag and discussed a 
frugal lunch which they drew from their pockets. 

A habit acquired of old when the hills had called me, asserted itself, 
and I ate and drank sparingly. Finished, I called Donald to me and 
gave him what was left, the larger part of my lunch, and then with 
numbed fingers I got out the wet pipe and damp tobacco. Fortunately 
my pouch was rubber and only a little water had trickled through its 
upper opening, and with matches taken from a dilapidated box I 
managed after many efforts to get a light 

The reviving effects of the food and the tobacco were soon apparent, 
and in fifteen minutes or so I called to Donald that I was ready to 
go on whenever he was. He came to my side then and pointing over 
my head into the wind, which swirled and shrilled past us, half- 
whispered : "There's a goot staug over yon, sir. I'm thinkin' we'll be 
stalkin' him," to which I responded, "Whatever you say, Donald." 

And so straight into the wind, while the rain blurred my shooting 
glasses, we went for the (to me) invisible stag. For a quarter of a 
mile we went, for half a mile, three-quarters, a mile. Much of this 
time my leader was bending low, half doubled to the ground. I did 
the same. We took advantage of cover. We followed up burns, 
sometimes wading them, sometimes stepping from stone to stone. At 
last we passed the full width of the lower ground and came to the 
flank of the mountain upon whose top we had earlier stood, but beyond 
the place of first climbing. 

Here instead of a grassy slope were rocky faces, some of them 
almost perpendicular, where the only way up was by clinging to crev- 
ices and along cracks. Without pause or explanation Donald started 
up. I after him, the gillie following me as always. And now came 
a truly heart-breaking climb, while the wind whipping around the 
shoulder of the steep faces threatened to throw us bodily into the abyss 
below, which gradually became more and more of an abyss as we moved 
higher. 



ELUSIVE STAGS. 31 

I suffered in this climb, but old ways and the training of years 
began to assert themselves, and though my muscles stiffened until they 
cracked every time I paused for a moment, I felt a reserve behind 
which I knew would help me to the top. 

And to the top I went, from which, in a lull of the storm, looking 
down we saw, or rather Donald saw first and pointed out to me, the 
deer we were pursuing. I remember just how they sprang into the 
object glass as I searched for them in the lower ground. 

I picked up, as I swung the glass slowly over the field, white rocks, 
gray and black rocks, brown heather and green, red brown grass near 
peat hags, and at last as if they had sprung at me, three stags not 
over a thousand yards away, where they stood surrounded by twenty 
or thirty hinds. Fine fellows they were, too, much larger than I 
expected to see. Noble, antlered heads and strong, clean-cut bodies 
above shapely legs. 

For the first time, impelled thereto by the labor I had performed I 
commenced to feel rising within me a desire to kill one of those stags, 
and I said to myself, "If I ever get close enough to one of you fellows 
the only reason I shall not kill you will be because I can't shoot well 
enough to hit you !" 

Retiring from the lookout place until a break in the spur hid us, we 
commenced a downward movement, still on the dangerous rock face. 
From the moment we began the descending stalk we were out of sight 
of the deer and would continue so until working up a ravine which lay 
at the foot of the range, we should, if all went well, come close enough 
for a shot. 

But all did not go well. The wind whipped and whirled about, 
blowing first from this way and that. I saw Donald shaking his head 
and I guessed that he feared the deer would catch our wind. It was 
so, because after infinite labor when we at last reached the point 
from which a shot might be possible we saw nothing in the place where 
the deer had stood at our last look. And only after some minutes of 
searching with the glasses was I able to pick them out, a mile and 
more beyond. 

After a long, long look through his glass, Donald, saying not one 
word, commenced to move upward again, now in a third and new place. 
We had lunched at two o'clock; it was late afternoon now and 



32 CHAPTER IV. 

the gillie was called up while the stalker gave him some more of 
those confidential instructions. This time I caught the word "ponies" 
and a movement of the hand in the direction where the ponies were 
supposed to be. 

The gillie left us, while we, climbing two-thirds of the way to the 
summit came into that same old bitter course, crossed and left it, and 
made our way around the mountain which brought us out at a 
vantage point looking down on a large valley (Scotch "corrie") 
spread below us. There were deer in it, but none in suitable places 
for a stalk. Then on a long slant we started back toward the path. 
When we reached its smooth surface again, darkness had fallen. 
Donald questioned : "Would the General wait here while I go back 
and get the ponies?" I said no. We would walk in. And we did. 

It was four miles to the Lodge and the path which had seemed smooth 
grew strangely rough with loose rocks that rolled under the feet, and 
the four places where we had to cross burns by precarious stepping 
stones loomed ominously before me. But we walked in. 

Oh, the scent of the peat smoke, when after we topped the last rise, 
the Lodge yard fence appeared dimly before us ! Sweet savor to the 
nostrils was that peat smoke. I knew it meant a hot bath and dry 
clothes and good food and rest and sleep ; and then the twinkling 
lights. Just a little way more and we were in. 

I did it and I could have gone further if I had had to, but I am 
very glad I did not have to. This was my first day of Scotch deer 
stalking and you will say it was a hard one. So did I, but it was 
worth all the labor it cost, even though I had not fired a shot; even 
though I had toiled and struggled until I thought I should fall from 
sheer weariness. Men's best rewards are sometimes indirect ones. 
Conquering obstacles, overcoming the weaknesses of the flesh and 
fighting old Mother Nature in her strongholds are activities to give 
any man satisfaction who has a drop of fighting blood in his body. 

I knew I had not acquitted myself ill in the eyes of my guide, and 
I chuckled to myself when I saw the light of understanding in my 
host's eyes as I told him it had been a good day and that deer stalking 
was a great game, and I meant it. I had commenced to glimpse the 
possibilities of what now appears to me to be one of the grandest 
sports a man can indulge in. 



CHAPTER V. 



I GET A SHOT. 



THE physiologies used to tell me when I went to school the number 
of bones in the human body. I've forgotten the exact count, as 
the scientific sharps made it, but I venture the statement that 
every single, solitary one of my bones — and I felt as if there were at 
least a thousand, — ached in its own individual and peculiar style, when 
Albert called me for my second day's stalk. 

Honestly I believe my getting out of bed sounded like the swinging 
of a barn door on extra rusty hinges. But I made it somehow, and 
afterwards crowded puffed and aching feet into unyielding shoes, that 
once large, seemed grown as diminutive as Cinderella's own. Don't 
make any mistake; they didn't look like Cinderella's slippers. They 
just felt that way. Not that the shoes were small, but the feet were 
large. 

I got out to the pony, of course after breakfast, and after two or 
three essays, into the saddle. The personnel of the party was the same 
as the day before. Our path the same. As I rode and felt the 
warming rays of the morning sun beating upon my back I gradually 
felt a little better, but when we came to the same old spot where the 
dismount had been made the day before there were very few muscles 
in my body which did not cry aloud as I began my trudge up the hill, 
the established three paces behind Donald. 

But, blessed be the scheme of things which gives compensation, and 
vouchsafes accommodation on the part of mankind to all and various 
necessities ! As I walked and grew warm I ceased to hurt here and there 
and I won the crest with much less labor than the day before. It was 
not altogether easy, but there was a plain gain. Of course the stalker 
had stopped to spy from convenient points as we went up, and at the 
top he told me there was a chance to stalk a stag which lay further 
on and below us. I said as before, "Whatever you say. You lead and 
I will follow." 



34 CHAPTER V. 

It was not a long stalk. Not over two miles and the ground was 
not too rough, though I promise you it was no tennis court surface 
we traversed. I had not been shown the deer, and I was utterly in the 
dark as to where we were going; all I could do was to follow my 
leader and model my movements upon his. 

We finally came to a very sloping spot where the grass was short 
and wet (it had been raining, though at that moment there was a lull) 
which slanted very steeply to a rock edge which broke off into space. 
From the extreme caution with which Donald made his way down 
this face I knew that he not only considered it a hazardous one on 
account of the chances of a fall, but also that he expected to see game 
when he crawled to the edge and peered over. I lay flat behind him 
with all the tense immobility of a frozen pointer, until he motioned me 
up, with a small movement of the hand by his side. 

When my head came to a level with his he pointed over the edge 
of the rock to a point below. Looking down from the ledge there 
was a sheer drop of perhaps 250 feet. Some little distance out from 
the base of the cliff, feeding quietly in a little meadow, were half 
a dozen deer, among them a very fair-sized stag. 

Donald intimated to me in hoarse whispers that I was to shoot at 
the stag. In the meantime the gillie crawling down behind me had 
taken hold of my feet. I was glad he had. As I lay, my head was 
easily three feet lower than my feet; and it was only by holding back 
hard, that I was able to keep from slipping over the edge. And now 
the stag was headed toward us, and wishing for a broadside shot 
I must wait. 

Then the mist came down and turned into rain. More waiting, more 
wetting, and increased cold. Finally there came a break in the watery 
curtains and the stag was seen feeding broadside on. In a straight 
line from the muzzle of my rifle to the beast was, as near as I could 
guess, 200 yards, and Donald said 200 yards, so that was probably 
about right. I knew I was likely to overshoot on a down hill shot, 
and so I held for the lower edge of the body behind the front leg 
and with the best and steadiest pull I could get under the circum- 
stances, cut loose. 

It was not a very satisfactory shot. My position was too insecure. 
I was too cold and uncomfortable to do my best, but at that I think 



/ GET A SHOT. 35 

I would have hit the stag if I had not been shooting with a rifle with 
strange sights. The rifle itself, although a familiar model, was a 
new one. I will tell you how that was after I explain what took place 
when the rifle cracked. 

At first I thought I had hit my mark, because the spurt of mud 
seemed below the level of the stag's back, and he squatted slightly, 
suggesting the giving downward of the back which a deer always 
shows when he has been hit in the body. The feeling that I had 
overshot was verified by Donald, who said quickly: "Juist over him, 
juist over him." 

The deer hesitated for a few seconds before he sprang away. I 
might have tried another shot, but I was too disheartened to attempt it. 

I was not feeling very gay over my performance, as you can imagine, 
and I felt for an instant ashamed before my stalker, also I was 
dreading what he might say in criticism. But this was not that sort 
of man. Never did anyone find more quickly good and sufficient 
reasons for missing than Donald found for me then. "The position 
was a bad 'un," he said. "And 'tis verra, verra hard to shoot when 
one iss so cauld; and the light was bad." 

I appreciated it all, but you know how I felt toward myself, and 
you can imagine what my feelings were for Donald. It was so with 
him always. Through sheerest love of fair play and wishing to give 
me good sport, he always found the best of excuses for my mistakes 
and the highest praise for every reasonably good thing I did. 

About the rifle, the situation was this : I had bought a Ross .280 
before I left this country and I had fallen madly in love with it. 
Its high muzzle velocity of 3,050 feet per second gave such a flat 
trajectory that up to 400 yards one need not worry about elevation 
if shooting at deer. The recoil was of no consequence; the piece 
balanced like a well built shotgun. 

I could manipulate the bolt with my one hand very readily and 
the rifle shot where I held it, and besides, it carried a sharp, hollow 
copper-pointed bullet cartridge which for killing effect seemed almost 
incredibly capable. But, as so often happens, another man wanted 
the gun and I let him have it, relying upon the Ross people being 
able to send me another of the same model to Scotland for such 
incidental uses as I would require of a rifle. Remember, at the time, 



36 CHAPTER V. 

I did not have deer stalking in my mind as a very serious or desirable 
occupation. 

The rifle came, and it was all that I desired in every way except 
sighting. The rear sight, open and of the V variety, was made as 
Britishers generally desire their open sights, broad at the top and 
tapering to the bottom, so that to get normal ranging qualities one 
had to put the front sight in the bottom of the V. 

I have spent a good deal of my life in teaching men to do good 
and consistent shooting with the open sight by putting the top of 
the front sight on a level with the top of the V. That means a 
relatively narrow V or a U, and a shallow one. I had just two shots 
from my new Ross before I fired it at deer. I knew that I had to 
get that front sight in the bottom of the V, but it was a mighty 
hard thing for me to do. I had to sight and then think about it 
every time I got actually sighted and ready to pull, and look more 
than once before I could be actually sure that I was not aiming too 
high. 

Of course, I did not say any of these things to Donald, or even 
to myself at the time. I just said nothing to the men, and to 
myself, "A miss, confound you, a miss." But I drew back from the 
edge of the drop as soon as I could to where I could relax my strained 
muscles and take a good, long breath. The deer moved on, but not 
having seen us, they did not go above a mile. 

Donald led me on another stalk; this time not a very difficult 
one, and we came out on a reasonable ledge to see my stag at 
about 250 yards lying down, head toward me. I knew I could 
not hit him in that position, so I waited for him to get up. We were 
well hidden; the wind was blowing straight from the deer to us, and 
there was little chance of their being frightened, and yet, of course, 
the wind might change. 

By now I was becoming very anxious to kill this deer. I felt a 
personal grudge against him. I wanted to take it out of his hide. 
I wanted, in short, to kill him, and dip my hands in his blood. I 
was savage and there was no mistake about it. I felt entitled to a deer, 
anyway. I conceived I had earned one, and as far as I was concerned, 
as long as it was up to me I proposed to get one — if I could. 



I GET A SHOT. 37 

Maybe it was a little fault in the wind, perhaps something else 
caused the alarm, anyway the deer — as I lay watching them, growing 
colder and colder every minute, my clothes being wet and the ground 
still more so, — took fright, stood up quickly and commenced to move 
off. This threw my stag practically broadside on, and I took a quick 
shot at him. I made up my mind I would not over-shoot this time 
and I did not. 

At the sound of the gun he sprung what looked like ten feet straight 
up into the air and then was away like a whirlwind. I knew what 
I had done, and when we got to the place where he had stood I proved 
myself to have been right in my conjecture. There was a nice little 
bunch of hair — about the size of the nub you have seen your sister or 
some other lady roll up after she had been performing the morning 
operation with her crowning glory — the size of a walnut, I should say. 
Not even a piece of hide attached to it. I had just cut a nice little 
groove across the under side of my stag's breast. In this case as in 
the other, Donald made excuses. He said the shot was hard; said 
it was a hazardous one; he remarked again that it was "verra hard 
to shoot when ane war sae cauld." In brief the fine fellow made 
every excuse he could think of to explain my poor shooting. I told 
him the truth. I just missed, that was all. 

Through the glasses the deer seemed not so frightened after they 
had gotten half a mile away from us, and they finally settled and 
went to feeding again, — all but the one I had shot at, — a little over a 
mile further along the mountain side. 

We stalked again, and once more successfully. This time my beast 
was lying in a little gully practically 200 yards away on a hillside just 
as near the color of a deer as anything I ever saw. I could just see 
his horns above the heather. I had to lie and wait for him to get up. 
I waited and I waited. The sun was rapidly going down. I was wet 
through ; I had been warm from the stalk and I grew cold, very 
cold. 

Also I grew angry at that deer and more eager to kill him with 
every passing second. Finally he rose hurriedly and started up the 
hill, not quite but almost broadside on. I swung the muzzle of the 
rifle with him and intended to wait until I was absolutely sure and 
then plug him where it would do him the most harm. But I did not. 



38 CHAPTER V. 

For as I swung, against my will and for absolutely no cause what- 
soever, without intention and just through sheer idiocy I gave the 
trigger a jerk; whang went the gun and I'll bet you the bullet didn't 
go within twenty feet of him. 

What was to be said ? Nothing, absolutely nothing. The stupidity 
of it did its own talking. But Donald again said the shot was one 
easily missed. 

It was too dark to try another stalk, even if the stag had not gone out 
of range, which he had, so we turned back toward the path, and so 
on home again. 

I was tired on this night, but not so much so as the night before. 
The stalking had cut down the number of miles traveled very ma- 
terially. As I parted from Donald by the Lodge door, taking the rifle 
from him to throw out the cartridges from the magazine before I let 
it go to the gun room to be cleaned, I said : 

"Well, Donald, yesterday it wasn't your fault or my fault, it was 
the deer's fault. Today it wasn't your fault or the deer's fault, it 
was my fault." To which the faithful fellow answered,, "A, weel, 
'twas verra hard shootin', sir; verra hard. Ye'll have better luck soon." 

I told the Chief all about it after dinner that night, with no attempt 
to varnish up the weak places. I informed him that I had fired three 
shots at a stag and missed, except for one tiny bunch of hair which 
nobody could eat, and which was useless as a trophy. He also tried 
to comfort me, by saying the shooting was extremely difficult, the con- 
ditions strange and new, and he cited cases of some of the best shots 
he had known, men who had proven their skill upon ranges where the 
champions of the world competed, who, when they tried the Scotch 
deer, found themselves in the novice class and among the "also rans." 

It is true that the background against which the Scotch stag is 
usually found when you try to shoot him is so difficult that at 200 
yards eyes of ordinary quality experience great difficulty in finding 
the line where the stag ends and the background begins. When you 
look at the fellow through the sights he becomes extremely vague and 
indefinite. However, as I told the Chief, I thought even better of 
deer stalking as a game than I did on the first day, and that I had 
made up my mind to kill a stag if I possibly could. 



CHAPTER VI. 

A DAY WITH THE CHIEF. 

THE next day we took a motor in the morning and with the Chief 
at the helm spun and swished and swung around the winding hill 
road to another side of the forest. 

Of course you understand that to call it a "forest" is about as 
sensible as to style it a lake. There is no forest. Of the whole 55,000 
acres making up the Benmore deer forest there is not over ten acres 
of trees. These are stunted little fellows, and only grow on the lower 
ground. 

We descended from the motor and started up what proved to be 
about a six-mile climb to the summit of a great rock dike. At first 
the slope was extremely gradual. In fact we climbed two or three 
foot hills and went down into valleys between. Then we had a rather 
stiff contest with a fairish slope thickly set with soft heather. After 
that a broken rocky slant to the top. 

Even so soon though, my muscles had commenced to do their work 
better, and I found the climb finished with none of those acute symp- 
toms of distress of the first day. The view from the top was worth 
a dozen climbs — yes, a hundred. 

So far away that it seemed in another world, as I gazed toward 
the west, there swung, seemingly 'twixt earth and sky, a great tur- 
quoise in which a little black center floated. It was the sea and an 
island in it, off the west coast of Scotland. Proud peaks with bold 
but handsome faces lifted their heads on three sides. Burns wound 
silvering down through gorse-clad glens and by craggy faces. Little 
lochs and large lay scattered about in the valleys' floors, like children's 
beautiful toys cast carelessly there by a youngling giant. 

It seemed as though I had been upon these peaks before and loved 
them. Had I cared less I could say more. What man can describe 
the face of the Dearest Girl, though all may try? 



40 CHAPTER VI. 

There was to me in those Highland summits not alone the rare 
pleasure of conquest through sturdy labor; there was an elevation 
above sordid and commonplace and ordinary things. A freedom and 
a liberty, a glad, high joyousness which was worth crossing all the 
seas to feel. 

There is not any use trying to convey to you the impression which 
the hills of Scotland made upon me. Go for yourself and see and 
feel. If they are for you and you for them you will know what I 
mean. If not it would be a waste of time to try to tell you. 

I saw ptarmigan again this day. Not pure white as yet, though they 
will be so later in the season. Fine, swift-flying birds. It would be 
great sport to go for them with a shotgun, because they live only on 
the heights and rocky, stern, places are their choice. I never saw one 
in the grass or anywhere except in the broken, rocky tops. They are 
about the size of a grouse, perhaps a little smaller, but they fly differ- 
ently. They use their wings more as a pigeon does. 

It was very broken ground on this top. Nature had here evidently 
passed through the severest convulsions. Great dikes of rock would 
loom before us and apparently cut off further progress, but there 
were ways around. Donald was not leading us this day, but "Danny," 
Danny Mackay, the head stalker. Danny looked frail. He had a thin 
face, his cheeks were not very full, though his eyes were bright. But 
he had legs so long that it seemed to me he could, like the historic 
character in vaudeville, button his trousers to his collor button if he 
wished. The way he could move over rough ground and the speed at 
which he navigated upon those legs was almost paralyzing. He never 
seemed to tire, and he could cover the worst ground as fast as most 
of us move upon the level. 

It was not until after lunch that Danny spied deer where he thought 
we might stalk. Then after moving over some reasonably rough 
ground, he stopped near the edge of the great rock dike and came 
back to the Chief, who had been following three paces in his rear, 
while I had maintained that distance to keep third place and a gillie 
followed me, after an equal interval. 

Danny spoke for a few moments in whispers to my friend, who 
came back to me and with some concern said : "The place where Danny 
is going to stalk now is probably the most difficult in the forest. It 



A DAY WITH TUB CHIEF. 41 

is extremely dangerous ground. I don't want you to feel any em- 
barrassment in declining to go with us, because it is a hard enough 
place for a man with two hands." 

I said; "Can I get a look at what it is like?" 

"Yes," he replied. "Come to the edge here." 

It did look rather nasty. There were rock faces which could only 
be passed by crevice clinging and working along around shoulders 
which lay up above falls sufficient in magnitude to guarantee them quite 
a drop too much. 

I had come to the Highlands without enthusiasm, more to please 
my friend than for any other reason, but already they had cast a 
spell upon me. I loved them. They seemed to me familiar, tried 
and trusty friends. Anything they had to offer, either a successful 
climb or a slip and a fall that would put a period to further physical 
activities was theirs to offer and mine to accept. 

I whispered to the Chief, "You can make it, can't you?" He 
answered "Yes." "All right then," said I : "if you can do it, I can. 
Go ahead." 

It was a goodish piece of rock and grass work; sometimes feet 
first, sometimes head on, always with the greatest care to avoid rolling 
loose stones down which would disturb the deer, but without mishap 
or accident of any kind we came at the very last to the place from 
where we were to shoot. 

There was a little cup-like depression in which we lay and rested 
for a few moments before crawling up to the edge. As we did so 
the Chief said to the head stalker : "Danny, will the General find 
many worse places than that in Scotland?" and Danny, shaking his 
head, said: "Na, I dinna think so." And then the Chief — "How many 
gentlemen, Danny, do you think, of those you know, would attempt 
a stalk down a face like that?" 

" Weel, I'm thinkin' aboot ha' of 'em wad decline it, Chief," answered 
the lanky Scotchman. 

When we were all steadied, we crept to the edge and amongst 
twenty-five or thirty deer, distant about 200 yards, about half of these 
yards being straight down, my intended victim was pointed out. I 
was as steady as a rock. I took plenty of time. I picked the lower 
line of the body of my stag just behind the foreleg. I never had 



42 CHAPTER VI. 

a better or more perfect pull-off in my life, but I'll be hanged if I 
thought about the necessity for getting that front sight down into 
the very bottom of the V, and the consequence was — once more, just 
over. 

The Chief fired after I had done my worst and broke the back of 
his beast, a fine stag which afterward dressed over 200 pounds. But 
you could not spoil my temper that way. The climb and the stalk, 
the feeling of new and vigorous life that was crowding all through 
me, made me a hard man to make angry. There was so much good 
in the worst of what I was getting, that it was impossible to make 
me complain. 

We made the climb down the balance of the cliff and the men 
attended to the stag, which they then dragged over to the pony path, 
and down this we walked the six miles which intervened between us 
and the Lodge. 

That night at dinner the Chief said to me; "I have to motor down 
to the Castle tomorrow (this meant fifty-eight miles to his home 
estate). It is Friday. You can come with me if you like, spend 
Sunday comfortably at the Castle and then take part in a grouse drive 
to which a friend of mine has invited you for Monday. We can come 
back Tuesday and stalk again Wednesday. Or you can stay here if 
you like, and stalk tomorrow, Saturday. If you do that I shall 
probably come back Sunday night. Of course we do no shooting here 
on Sunday, nor fishing. My Scotchmen are very devout and believe in 
respecting the Sabbath. You do just what you like." 

I decided to stay, rather than lose three days of stalking. The 
incident was typical of my host's attitude toward me. I suppose, being 
eternal, these hills were here before his ancestors, but not long before, 
I imagine, for the land upon which sits the Lodge at the head of 
Loch Ailish, has been in his family for more than seven hundred 
years. There are, as I have said, about 55,000 acres in the Benmore 
deer forest. I judge this to be measured around its boundaries, but 
as I said to the Chief one night, I suspect there are close to 200,000 
acres, if you measure both sides of the hills ; so many of them sit 
up edgewise. 

The Chief has other deer forests and grouse moors; several, I 
don't know how many; and his holdings in Scottish and English lands 



A DAY WITH THE CHIBP. 43 

amount to over 300,000 acres. He is a baronet, but that does not 
seem to bother him. His titles, or his lands, or his natural great 
intelligence have not served to make him other than the most gracious 
host and thoroughgoing sportsman companion of any man I ever knew, 
except one. 

He forgot nothing while I was with him which might add to my 
comfort and happiness, and yet there never was the slightest display 
of burdensome, intensive hospitality which one sometimes encounters. 
His style of entertaining was the happiest blending of the best form 
of American guest carefulness and that somewhat disconcerting British 
ultra-freedom of action. To me the Chief proved a most intensely 
interesting and congenial companion. He has globe trotted with the 
best, China, India and the far isles of the East have known him. 
He served with distinction as a volunteer in the last passage of arms 
between the British and the Boers. He has shot game, big and little, 
in most places where shooting is to be had. He is alert of mind and 
facile of hand; inventing, perfecting, manufacturing and offering to 
the world the children of his brain and ten fingers. 

He is as much at home in a machine shop as in a drawing room, 
and withal a true sportsmen in every fiber of his being. Finding 
himself at his majority land poor, with a far-sightedness and good 
sense which do him infinite credit, he abandoned the career of a 
soldier for which he had been educated and in which he would most 
certainly have shone, and undertook to rehabilitate the fortunes of 
his house. This undertaking has met with conspicuous success. 

I like him, and it pleases me to be able to say pleasant things about 
him. The pleasure he gave me during my Scotch experiences could 
not be measured in human emotions, nor paid for in any coin of God 
or man. 

I saw the Chief away in his trim little "Fiat" and then with Danny, 
head stalker, he of the legs, you remember, in another car we ran 
over the same ground as the morning before and took the same climb. 

But now my legs commenced to know me as their master, and my 
lungs and heart complained not of the strain put upon them. There 
was much rain this day, as Danny and I went on to the top. It was 
cold and I felt the cold, but I gloried in it, and in my strength to 
stand the walk against the wind, and beat it back and push it aside. 
I shook my head in the teeth of the gale and dared it to come on. 



44 CHAPTER VI. 

Old Mother Nature was doing her work and as usual slighting 
nothing. Having punished me in the early hours of my intimate con- 
tact with her in her stronghold she was now paying me back for being 
a good boy and taking my medicine without unseemly whimpering. 

You can imagine by this time how keen I had grown on the subject 
of shooting a stag. Everybody had been so nice about my misses — 
and you will recall they were now four — explaining them away and 
excusing me, that I felt that it was absolutely up to me to show them 
that I was not a complete dub, and that I could kill at least one stag. 
So I hunted hard this Saturday morning, and Danny, feeling my 
desire, gave his whole heart to completing a successful stalks 

We made several trials but the wind was shifty and four different 
times we came to where we expected to see the deer within shooting 
distance to find them awav. 

Late in the afternoon, after many fruitless attempts, we stalked up 
a corrie (big gulch) with walls so steep and high it was morally 
certain a deer could not climb them without extra effort. But when 
we completed the stalk and came to the vantage point Mr. Stag was 
gone. Vanished as if into air. We never did find out how he 
escaped without attracting our attention. 

Now it was dark or near it, and we made for the path to strike it 
at a point which would be about seven miles from the Lodge. Here 
we found the ponies waiting, but no ponies for me on this night. I 
walked on ahead, alone, and covered every inch of it at a good swing- 
ing four miles an hour, trotting sometimes on the downhill places. 

The path went around by the big burn, and across little ones. The 
moon came out over the jagged hills and painted misty and weird 
pictures, as only the moon, master artist of the mysterious, can. I 
drank up the sweet, fresh, night air, in great deep breaths. I thanked 
God from the bottom of my heart for the opportunities, the fresh 
chances, He had given me; for His merciful kindness in letting me 
live; for His forgiveness of my many shortcomings and weaknesses; 
for His generous and considerate permission just to be alive, and be 
able to feel as I felt. 



CHAPTER VII. 

"he's a dead 'un. m 

I DINED in solitary state that night, the butler serving me with all 
the formal care which he might have bestowed upon a host of dis- 
tinguished guests, and I went early to bed where I slept with ex- 
ceeding great satisfaction and restful comfort, until eight o'clock of 
a Sunday morning. 

When I rung my bell and when Albert came, I designated in a few 
crisp sentences my desire for some oatmeal porridge and cream, bacon 
and eggs, buttered toast, marmalade, and coffee, on a tray in my 
bed. And I got them, and I ate them, and I went straightway to 
sleep again, and I slept until full twelve o' the clock, noon. Then I 
rose full of the joy of life, and, bathed and shaved and clean-clad 
in fresh clothes, had my mid-day meal and then sat in sweet content 
befoie the leaping fire on the rest room hearth, and smoked and 
dreamed. And just before sunset I walked down the road, thinking I 
might meet the Chief motoring in. 

It was a beautiful way I traveled down the good road by the side 
of the L,och. I was so comfortable in mind and body I could almost 
feel myself purr like a cat. I thought of the new game which I 
was playing, one I had never tried. Shooting deer in the Rocky 
Mountains and elsewhere I had pursued them was quite a different 
sport. I had shot the lesser and the greater game in many spots, but 
this stalking of the Scottish stag, Monarch of the Highlands, was 
as much a journey into undiscovered country as was Columbus' first 
voyage into the mysterious West. 

Other men care for new trails, to sail upon uncharted seas; to ex- 
plore the unknown, and so did I. So I was happy and content. I 
said to myself if be my good fortune to get a stag, well and good. 
If not, I shall not bemoan my fate or growl at my luck. 



46 CHAPTER VII. 

Long, long ago I learned that the sportsman who puts the bag 
first is very poorly served by fortune in sports afield. To me, I 
mused, the creatures I pursue and their capture are incidental to my 
pleasure. I gather my joy from the contact with Nature. 

I reap the rarest pleasure from admission to kinship with the great 
forces of Life, which the high, and the wild, and the rugged outdoor 
places always bring to the man who has enough of the primitive 
human in him to be sometimes natural. So in love with myself and 
my surroundings I continued on, through the peaceful evening scenes 
by which my way lay. 

Shortly I heard the hum of a motor in the distance, and soon around 
a curve into sight slipped the car of the Chief. In a twinkling the 
swift-moving vehicle was abreast of me and stopped. From it descended 
to shake my hand in greeting, a second guest, the Captain, who came 
to stalk for two or three days. I declined the offer of a lift and 
strolled back by the way I had come. 

The scene had a rare beauty all its own. On my left the Loch, 
painted black with the shades of evening; on my right, undulating 
grass-covered hills, rising somberly to blend with the night sky. The 
finely graveled road beneath my feet gave my eyes freedom to linger 
on the saw-toothed ridges and high, curious carven mountains which 
rose dimly as to bases, and clearly as to crests in my far front. 

A little island in mid-loch with feathery branches of small trees 
showing, looked not larger than a parlor rug, and yet seemed great 
enough to hold a multitude of eerie night spirits, hungering for the 
moment of their release, to be gone upon friendly, harmless night 
revels. 

The way ran around the long folds of the hill in graceful curves 
until, uncovered by the last, the twinkling lights of the Lodge danced 
into view, and down the glen was wafted the pungent taint of peat 
smoke, evermore to be coupled in my mind with the day's end, and 
rest well earned. 

Up the now familiar path traveled on the first day, I tramped in 
high spirits behind Donald, on this the fifth day of my stalk, the 
tramping and the climbing of the week before, followed by a day of 
perfect rest, gave what could be expected, a freshness, a vim, a zest, a 
hunger for the hills, an appetite for exercise and a keenness to kill. 



"HE'S A DEAD 'UN." 47 

It was a delicious morning. The sun shone warmly on my back as 
I swung along, the ponies ignominiously relegated to the rear. I 
reveled in the crispness of the air, the music of the burn's down-rush 
was sweet to my ear beyond expression. Nor were there any terrors 
for me in the big mountain ahead. Step for step after my sturdy 
stalker I covered the zig-zag path to the point where on the first day 
I had dismounted from my pony to commence the strenuous climb up 
the hill. 

Today I was already on foot and quite willing, indeed anxious, 
for some stiff uphill work. But we were not going to attempt the 
mountain again just now, for at the white stone spy spot, now grown 
an old friend, Donald sat down as usual to spy. I noticed that he 
looked longer at the right front than anywhere else and I tried my 
field glasses for some time in that direction. 

His gaze seemed to be directed upon a wide plateau which stretched 
from the foot of the hillside upon which we sat for four or five miles, 
in a general northerly direction. I saw nothing on all this grassland 
which even faintly resembled deer, so, after a rather cursory sweeping 
of the glasses across it, I turned to the valley in which lay Loch 
Ailish, sparkling and scintillating in the morning sun, and nearer the 
red roof of the Lodge its blue smoke curling above, while like over- 
grown daisies showed the white sheep dotting the green of the Lodge 
enclosure. 

Hearing a low murmur of voices, I took my eyes from the glasses 
to see the gillie, now seated alongside of Donald with his telescope 
fixed upon the same point toward which the stalker looked. I sat 
patiently waiting, knowing that I should have whatever information 
I was entitled to when the proper time came. I had filled and 
lighted my pipe and I was quite content to sit in that salubrious sun- 
shine absorbing the serene happiness of the hour, careless of the 
future, but pleasantly thrilled by the thought of what might be in store. 

Donald's lean forefinger was perfectly steady as he pointed toward 
the spot upon which his glass had been directed, and his voice be- 
trayed no excitement, but I caught a gleam in his eye as he said: 
"There's a shoot'able staug over yon, sir, and the wind is na' sae bad, 
but the groond is verra bad. I'm thinkin' 'twull be a long and deeficult 
stalk, sir." 



48 CHAPTBR VII. 

"Well," I replied, "I don't mind that. Whatever you say, Donald. 
You're in command. All I have to do is to follow you, obey 
orders, and fire my salute when the time comes. But I warn you 
before we start not to bring me within range of a stag unless you 
want that particular beast killed, because I've a notion that any shot 
I fire today is going to mean meat for the camp." 

Donald had a sense of humor. He smiled a broad smile, as he 
said: "Weel, we'll juist gang on, sir." 

For a moment I did not know whether he intended to move away 
from the deer or toward them, but I was reassured when he said : 
"Maybe ye'd like to see them before we start? Look doon the hill 
from where the sharp notch on the skyline over yon twa mile and 
a ha', is in line wi' the white stane and the verra furthermoist peat 
hag, and ye'll see them lyin'. The staug is furthest frae us." 

By dint of much searching and by virtue of my good glasses I 
finally picked up the deer. I judged them to be at least two miles 
from us in an air line. They were upon the gentle slope of a grassy 
table-land which inclined toward Glen Muick and us. Searching out 
the ground on all sides of them it did not seem to me possible they 
could be stalked. It was hard ground indeed, but as Donald had 
observed, the wind was right, because it blew from them almost di- 
rectly toward us. 

Down the hill we went, taking long strides and making famous 
headway. As soon as we were a hundred yards from the spying place, 
the deer were out of sight. It was not long before the notch in the 
hill and everything else except the grassland in front of us had dis- 
appeared. I wondered how well Donald could orient himself and I 
watched with close attention. 

We had to make detour after detour to avoid rough and boggy places 
or to cross obstructions, but he always swung back to that general 
direction which seemed the right one to me. 

This grassy meadow was like the one I encountered when I first 
tried the grouse. It had water underneath and the walking was not 
easy. We were going quickly and were soon in a fine glow. After 
a time we came into a little gully, that ran around the hill at right 
angles to the course we had been pursuing. Up this we started. Its 
sides were peat and in its bottom a little burn, the walls of it six or 



"HB'S A DEAD 'UN." 49 

seven feet high, where we entered them, though it grew more shallow 
as we went up it. 

But now Donald was moving with the greatest care, and I likewise 
of course, as I imitated his every movement. He stopped, turned half 
way about, and moving his hand downward, I saw that he intended 
me to stop. When he perceived that I understood his sign he slipped 
up over the edge of the bank in the direction I knew the deer to be 
and wriggled his way snakewise out of sight. The gillie and I leaned 
against the black bank and waited. 

Five minutes later, moving with no sound, and so close to the earth as 
a man could flatten himself, Donald was back again to the gully, and 
slipping to my side. His eyes were alight with the spirit of the chase, 
as he leaned close to my ear to whisper: "They're juist a bit way 
on, sir; the staug is lyin' doon, safe enoo. From yon bit hillock (and 
he pointed to a little rounded mound close by, not over eight inches 
above the surrounding surface). I think ye can ha' a shot, if they 
dinna fricht, at a hunner an' ninety yard." 

I gave him back "All right" and my tongue began to dry in my 
mouth. Ah, but I was keen to get that stag! No more did I feel a 
disinclination to kill a deer. I had done my dole ; I was entitled to 
a deer, and I intended to get him — if I could. 

With the greatest caution we worked our way to the point Donald 
had designated, and here between the grass stems which were high 
enough to rear their tops above my head as I lay there, I had my 
first close glimpse of a Scotch stag and his lady kind, the hinds. 
He looked a fine figure of a deer as he reposed at ease, his nose pointed 
straight toward me; his gallant antlers springing from his broad brow 
like young trees. 

As we made our last advance Donald had slipped the rifle from its 
case and now began to slide it along the ground toward me. I grasped it 
and cautiously thrust the blue muzzle through the grass stalks, settling 
myself as I had thought to fire, if I had time for such a maneuver, 
with my field glass case for a partial rest, as I knew the impossibility 
of a right arm without a hand upon it being sufficient to sustain the 
rifle while I fired. But alas and alack-a-day! When I looked along 
the sights all I could see before me was grass. Not a glimpse of the 
stag. The rifle was too low. 



50 CHAPTER VII. 

While I was debating whether to move for a better position or what 
to do, the stag, apprised of our presence by some instinct, or a waft 
of wind, sprang up quickly, and as he did so the rifle muzzle rose 
with him. His legs were scarcely straight as he gained his feet when 
my left forefinger moved, and the shot rang out. 

Trying afterward to get the position from which I had fired, I found 
it was one I had conceived impossible. Firing from the left shoulder 
as I must, resting both elbows upon the ground, the end of my right 
arm was supporting the rifle by touching the stock back of the trigger 
guard. 

At the shot the deer gave down in the back. I was too engrossed 
in watching him to think of opening my bolt and sending him the 
contents of another cartridge. As I gazed intent with expectation and 
desire, keyed to the highest point, I saw him move forward, half a 
dozen staggering steps, and I whispered to Donald: "Will he do, 
will he do?" — and Donald as tense and as interested as I, replied: 
"He's a dead 'un." Even as the last whispered words came to me 
the stag wavered for a moment and then fell headlong and lay without 
a quiver. 

The six or seven hinds had dashed away at the shot, but they were 
still in sight. I had drawn in enough knowledge of the requirements 
of the situation in a deer forest to know we ought not to show our- 
selves until the hinds were out of sight, so we lay quiet. I did work 
my bolt, then, and covered the stag for fear he might rise and make 
off. But the hinds having passed from view we moved over to the 
old fellow and found him quite dead. The bullet had struck him about 
four inches below the backbone and about three inches to the rear 
of a perpendicular line passing through the heart. 

I had killed my first Scotch stag. 

The attentions which he required from the men were soon paid him; 
a little cross of his fresh blood was marked upon my brow, and then 
Donald and the gillie, with ropes which they drew forth for the pur- 
pose started to drag the body to the burnside at a point where the 
pony could be brought to get him. 

Donald was quite as happy over the successful outcome of the stalk 
as I. Indeed I think more so. I came to love this honest fellow before 
we parted. He was as genuine a sportsman as I have ever known. 



"HE'S A DEAD 'UN." 51 

His joy in the chase was conspicuously real. He had as much taste 
for the pursuit as a well bred hunting dog, and probably with as much 
reason, as his fathers before him for generations had been huntsmen 
and stalkers. 

My stag had a very fair, though not unusual head. Nine points, 
and he weighed dressed, fourteen stone nine, or 205 pounds. He was 
in excellent condition ; as fat as butter. When we had him where the 
pony could be easily brought to him, the pipes came forth and we sat 
down for a bit to talk it over. 

Donald had by this time decided that he could talk to me without 
fear of being misunderstood. He did not now, and in fact he rarely 
ever did begin a conversation, but when I gave him an opening he was 
from this hour willing to converse with considerable freedom. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

TWO AT ON£ STALK. 

BACK from the point where the dead stag lay we moved to our spy 
place of the morning, and from thence up the old mountain face 
again, where I had gone on my original climb. 

But, oh, what a difference today! I was at the top almost before 
I knew it, and quite willing to start on at once. We lunched upon 
the mountain top in a little sheltered place where the wind missed us 
and the sun shone brightly, close by a little crystal rill, which burst 
from the shattered rock face and gave us water for our whiskey — if 
we needed it. 

And then began one of the most extended stalks of my Scotch ex- 
perience. From the top of the mountain a good stag was located in 
the lower ground in a direction opposite to that where the kill of 
the morning had been made. We stalked down for this fellow. He 
was gone. We picked him up after a while in the distance and stalked 
him there. He had moved on. 

In the great pocket of the hills in which we were working the winds 
were utterly unreliable, and blew this, that and the other way, spoiling 
our chances over and over. I remember one time during this after- 
noon that we stalked down a glen which had a fine, big burn in the 
bottom of it, and in this burn the stalking was done. Sometimes in 
icy water above the knees, at other moments stepping from slippery 
stone to slippery stone as far as the legs would reach ; crawling along 
by banks, wriggling over gravelly bars, and what was to be the final 
stage of a hundred yards or so, snake-wise, stomach on the ground 
through water seeping up through the moss from one to six inches 
deep, and at the end of it some hinds between us and the stag took 
fright and he was up and away before I could get my gun out of 
its case. 

Night finally came upon us and some eight miles from the Lodge 
I took the path and made off for home. When I got in the Chief and 



TWO AT ONE STALK. 53 

the Captain had already arrived. The Chief had killed a good stag, 
the Captain one more. They had gone together in another direction 
from that which I had taken. It was not hard to find topics of con- 
versation that night. The stags of this and other days had their lives 
and deaths recounted. 

I thought I should have dreamed of deer all night long, but the 
moment my head touched the pillow, or just after, there was Albert 
with the hot water, and another dav had come. 

And now I spent a day on the moors, walking up grouse. A tall, 
slow, broad-shouldered, black browed gillie, by name John Mclntyre 
went with me. John was supposed to know where the grouse were 
lying, but between us 'twas little enough information he had upon that 
point. He had a deer stalker's instinct, though a slow fellow, and 
every chance he got was spent spying for stags on the further hills, 
though we were outside of the forest proper. 

But we had a fine day with an occasional grouse; enough for sport's 
sake ; a black cock or two and one mallard duck, that got up behind 
me from a little burn hole not much bigger than a bandbox. I surely 
had no complaint of that day. The sun shone for most of the time, 
and the occasional showers only emphasized the hours when they were 
absent. It made a good change from the stalking. 

The next day I was to stalk with the Chief in quite a new direction. 
I heard the winds shrieking around the L,odge when I awoke and by 
the time breakfast was over, looking out of the rest room window 
toward the L,och, one might have been pardoned for thinking the gale 
was going to blow it dry. The air was so full of water it seemed 
to move in solid sheets. 

Another guest had come the night before, Lord B . I dubbed him 

the Warrior, and he and the Captain, after finding every excuse 
imaginable, from the necessity of re-hobnailing shoes to writing im- 
portant business letters, finally took the trail for their appointed stalks. 
The Chief and I actually had some things to do but we stretched 
them out rather than face the blast. At last in sheer shame we could 
wait no longer. 

In one way it was good luck that the deer in the Sanctuary were 
in sight of us as we came up the burn, for after topping the ridge 
about two hundred of them were seen, and the Chief felt that in 



54 CHAPTER VIII. 

view of the character of the day we had better go back than run the 
chance of frightening this lot out of the forest altogether. 

The Sanctuary probably carries a good deal of its purpose of being 
to your mind by its name. It was a certain portion of the forest 
well toward the center where the deer were never to be shot, to 
which they could flee when fired upon and from which, on no account 
were they to be frightened. You can see how necessary such a place 
would be. Otherwise if deer were shot all over the place without regard 
to the preservation of the stock it would only be a little time until 
there would be nothing more to shoot. 

To preserve a deer forest after it has been established is a task 
which requires much knowledge and patience. To a certain extent 
the fact that all the country round about, immediately adjacent to the 
forest, is also divided into shooting grounds where deer are hunted 
is a help, because the animals can find safety only in places set aside 
and maintained for the purpose. Then an occasional owner places a 
line fence, sometimes one which is deer tight; and that is liable to 
make trouble. 

In any event great care is always used in the way one shoots; for 
instance — both because it is felt the deer ought to have a chance, and 
for the reason that many shots close together would have a tendency 
to over-frighten the deer, — two, or at the outside, three shots at any 
one animal are the limit. No hinds are ever shot except where the 
forest is overstocked with female deer or when the hinds are unde- 
sirable for breeding purposes. The younger stags are also immune, 
except those that bid fair to grow up into unlikely sires. 

A deer forest such as that upon which we were shooting would 
ordinarily lease for 2,500 guineas, or practically $12,500 per year. In 
addition to this sum a tenant would have to pay the stalkers and gillies 
and defray from his own pocket numerous incidental expenses. You 
can see that the sportsman who has a deer forest by ownership or 
lease is prepared to pay well for his fun. As far as I am concerned 
I cannot see where he could get more real sport at the price. 

The Captain and the Warrior came in rather draggled earlier than 
usual, after having been unable to get a shot. 

I went into Corrie Comblaureau — or something like that — the next 
day. I give you my word for it, if my life were forfeit I could not 



TWO AT ONE STALK. 55 

spell nor pronounce the name of that particular corrie, although I 
could go to it and all round it in the dark and never miss a peat hag 
or fail to fall over a single boulder. 

Shades of all those who knew the windy Kansas plains at their best, 
how the wind did wind this day! And the rain riot and the sleet 
sting. Whew! it was a fierce day, and so cold on the upper heights 
that standing still meant the shivers in about two shakes of an active 
stag's tail. 

I had gone up with an old stalker named Sandy, now mostly dis- 
placed from the higher grade to the rank of gillie, through certain 
dimness of perception and lack of skill, combined result of advancing 
age and too many long looks upon the bottle, and with Sandy I 
fought the tempest in pursuit of a likely stag from early morning 
until two o'clock, practically without pause. 

The wind was a difficult one to deal with and the ground extremely 
rough and troublesome to navigate. We made several stalks which 
seemed to me unwisely planned and not well carried out, having grown 
to some knowledge of the game after being with Donald and Danny. 

Very greatly to my surprise, I must confess, after negotiating a 
grassy slope which was so steep that we had to go down flat- 
wise clinging with all our strength, Sandy brought me out on a 
little rocky ledge from which he pointed to the deer feeding in the 
lee of the cliff about 200 yards away, in a straight line from where 
I lay. 

I had no trouble in distinguishing the stag we had been pursuing 
among this lot of some twenty and I saw what appeared to be two 
good sized stags. I whispered to Sandy, as we looked over with one 
eye only; "Are those other two stags shootable ones?" and when he 
answered yes, I questioned "If I shoot the large one shall I shoot the 
second if I can?" 

"Yes," said Sandy, "shoot all three of them if the General wishes." 
But I thought I detected a hint of hesitation in his tone, and besides 
that it seemed to me two stags would be enough, if I could get two; 
which I might, if lucky enough to place my first bullet where I wanted 
it. I had a fairly good position for a shot, but the wind was fear- 
fully strong. I took my time; held until I felt quite sure, and I was 
absolutely certain that the front sight was in the bottom of the V. 



56 CHAPTER VIII. 

Then I gave the final squeeze to the trigger and my second Scotch 
stag was out of action. 

This fellow never moved an inch. Just fell over dead, shot through 
the body a short distance back of the heart, a little high. That tiny 
.280 hollow point, copper tube bullet had done its work. Later when 
I examined this stag I found the point where the bullet had entered 
impossible of discovery from the outside, except by investigation con- 
ducted with a sharp lead pencil, but there was no such difficulty en- 
countered in finding the traces of the missile on the other side; the 
one farthest from me when I shot. There a hole which you could 
scarcely cover with the palm of your hand with the fingers extended, 
marked not where the bullet had gone out, but where the explosive 
effect of that copper tube missile had worked its destructive way. 

It is a most enlightening thing to see how these little bullets would 
set up explosive action inside of the body of a beast in a way to 
make one think a small dynamite cartridge had taken the place of 
the bullet. 

Well, anyway, the stag fell at the shot, and the other two shootable 
ones, not being quite sure of where the enemy lay, started directly 
toward me, running at a good gait. They came but a short distance 
and then turned to enter a ravine which ran up the hill to the right. 
As they turned I let shot number two go at the larger of them. 

The bullet hit him as he was in the air. He partly turned before 
he struck the ground and instead of landing on his feet he landed on 
his shoulder, his legs having doubled under him. Then he slid a little 
way down the hill, and swung while sliding until he commenced to roll 
over and over and over down a rock slide, not fetching up until he 
had slid and rolled a hundred feet. 

He too, never kicked, being stone dead, apparently, from the moment 
the shot struck him. The bullet had gone in about the center of the 
body just back of the heart. The third stag running up the hill, had 
to be in sight for perhaps another fifty yards. I swung the rifle on 
him, and then said to myself, "Oh, two stags at one stalk are certainly 
enough for any man;" and I did not fire. 

After Sandy and Duncan, the gillie who was with us that day, had 
given the necessary attention to the stags, we sat down about half 
past two and ate our lunch. It was then that the fiercest storm of 



TWO AT ONE STALK. 57 

the day came on. The wind must easily have reached fifty miles an 
hour, and the sleet which it brought with it was so fiercely driven 
that all one could do was to sit tight, with back toward the gale and 
wish for it to cease. It passed in time, or rather lessened, because 
the hailstorm continued for two hours or more, I think, but I was 
not caring much. 

We went down the hiil to the flat by the Loch side and from there 
to the trail, and the men with the ponies returned for the deer, while 
I went on to the Lodge alone, getting in a little past five o'clock. I 
was feeling a little more "comfy" in my mind about this time over 
my shooting, and found nothing to complain of in the rough weather, 
which I had been bucking since early morning. The two stags had 
respectively nine and six points; one of them weighed fourteen stone 
eight; the other fourteen stone six. Good sized deer, as you see, each 
over 200 pounds. 

There is a considerable diversity, of course, in the color of coat worn 
by these highland gentlemen, but in general appearance the deer sug- 
gests our white tail. Some were red brown and some were gray, but 
that is true of deer everywhere I have found them. They vary in color. 

There was a gray stag I met in the Highlands — oh, but that belongs 
to another day's stalk and you shall hear about it later. 



CHAPTER IX. 

"a gran' shot!" 

WELL, I had vacation on the day following my successful inter- 
view with the two stags on the windy hillside. There was no 
let-up in the program of wind and rain, but I met it on a 
different level this time, because I went out on the moors for grouse 
and black cock. 

We had a good day of shooting; not a big bag, I think about twenty 
brace all told fell to my shooting partner and myself. Among the 
birds were several black cock, magnificently plumaged individuals, 
whose dark green, almost black feathers had the irridescence of pea- 
cock copper. We had a pointer and a setter, but they did not work 
very well. A retriever was of more use; he succeeded in finding our 
down birds without difficulty. 

We encountered a few rabbits during the day and my companion 
disposed of all that moved within range of him. It was different 
with me. I missed those fortunate individuals which broke cover in 
my vicinity with a regularity as consistent as it was annoying. I 
had not shot rabbits since they formed my chief quarry in the Middle 
West during my boyhood, and had lost the knack. I discovered later 
that the reason I was missing was because I was too slow, and as the 
further and related cause I was stopping the gun in its swing just 
before I pulled the trigger. Naturally I shot behind the bunnies 
exactly enough to miss them. 

The next day was Saturday. The Admiral had come to take the 
place of the Captain, and the Man of the Sea stayed to stalk while 
the Chief, the Warrior and I, well wrapped up to resist the chill wind 
which still came, rain-laden, boarded the little "Fiat" for a run to 
Balnagown Castle, fifty-eight miles away. 

We spun along right merrily for about eighteen miles and for my 
part I was so glad and comfortable that I lifted up my voice in song, 
harking back to coon shouts I had known and old college choruses. 



"A GRAN' SHOT!" 59 

Fortunately there were few natives within hearing and the sheep did 
not seem to care. Perhaps a sheep has a fine ear for good music 
anyway, or possibly it is just simply patience. Perhaps it is as well 
that the real reason for the complacency of the sheep within sound 
of my singing is undiscoverable. 

Just as we slipped down a long smooth hill near the lodge gates 
of a fine country place practically eighteen miles from the starting 
point, the engine, which had been showing some signs of an internal 
disorder, decided that it had done enough for the moment and quit. 

We had already made some sacrifices to placate this demon of 
the motor, or at least I had, for just after we left the enclosure of 
Benmore, curling smoke advising an absence of water in the radiator 
also disclosed a condition of poverty with regard to any vessel with 
which to bring and pour the aqueous fluid, easily available otherwise 
from the nearest burn. 

I was wearing a Yankee hat of close, firm felt, and I offered it up 
upon the altar of necessity as a water vessel. It served its purpose 
well, but it came back to my head a shade on the damp side. The 
Chief was rather petulant with the motor, but he gave no expression 
in words to what he felt. He only said, "Well, just wait here until 
the other car comes and change to that. Alec (the chauffeur) can put 
this thing in order and come on after us." 

The following car arrived in a few moments and we transferred to 
her, thence on over a pleasant road through varied scenery for 
perhaps fifteen miles more in this motor, when it, too, exhibited un- 
mistakable signs of overheating. Once more the hat was requisitioned. 
Over a stone wall by the side of the road the nearest water was, a 
little pool in a cow pasture, and the fluid which it contained was 
not overly clean. 

We formed a fire brigade on the spot. The Warrior over the 
wall filled the hat with water and brought it to me. I carried it to 
the car where the Chief poured from the hat into the steaming radiator. 
There was a great deal of mud in this water and by the time we had 
succeeded in satisfying the thirst of the motor my hat presented 
rather a sorry spectacle of soiled and pulpy felt. 

Campbell, the head keeper, came to my rescue with a hat from his 
kit. It was one of those little cloth affairs which make one look like 



60 CHAPTER IX. 

the best clown in a first class circus, but it promised to protect the top 
of my head for the thirty-odd miles yet to go. About this time the 
Fiat came on, purring away like a comfortable cat. The Chief's decision 
was instantly made ; we re-transferred and were soon well on our way 
again. 

As we came to the low ground the hills flattened out; prosperous 
farms were passed, and characteristic Scotch villages were encountered. 

The Chief has a real knack with a car. He gets as much out of one 
as anybody possibly could, but the difficulty with the Fiat was too 
deeply seated for quick or easy removal. The car had been run some 
thousands of miles during a Use which covered five years. The feed 
pipes were clogged and nothing except a thorough and slow process 
of cleaning would make them right. 

About twenty miles from our last stop the engine commenced to 
hesitate and sputter, necessitating attention and nursing. It would go 
on in a perfectly undisturbed way until we felt quite sure that all 
trouble had passed, then in a twinkling would come the rickety, rackety 
exhaust which meant trouble. 

When we swung in at the dignified and age-tinted lodge gates of 
Balnagown, after coming up a lane by the high dark wall which marked 
the limit of the estate upon this side, a plump and rubicund old woman 
in clean cap and spotless white apron ran at the sound of the horn 
to unbar the portals and let us in. As we passed she bobbed a curtsey 
which was of a piece with her face, her garments and the gate. If she 
had not made this gesture I would have known something to be 
vitally wrong. 

Up the graveled drive, between lordly trees we spun to swing in a 
big circle up to the Castle entrance. A fine old building, my host's 
home. Its most ancient part built over seven hundred years ago, with 
sections pieced on as succeeding members of the family felt called 
upon to change or improve. 

We were just in time for luncheon ; and the welcome of the charm- 
ing lady wife of the Chief, and other feminine members of the 
family, together with the quiet, though real luxury of this genuinely 
fine old countryseat, were very agreeable. We rested here at ease until 
the next afternoon when we motored back to Benmore for further 
active investigations on the subject of the Scotch stag. 



"A GRAN' SHOT!" 61 

Before the drive was over night shut down, and as the car clawed 
its slippery way into the higher hills the familiar rain greeted us. The 
dash of the wet drops in my face was a caress. It was like the "Glad 
to see you back again !" of one who has waited for and welcomes 
your return. 

The next morning with Donald for my pilot, I started upon a long 
trudge toward Corrie Vattie; the gillies and the ponies were ready, 
but I left it to the men to ride if they would. As for me I preferred 
to walk. We went along the now quite familiar trail, zig-zagged up 
over Stone End, dipped down to the level of the plateau beyond and 
then up and down to the upper reaches of the preserve. 

From spying points we saw deer, but nothing which appealed to 
Donald. For between nine and ten miles we stuck to the path and 
made good time, then we swung off to the right through rough ground, 
and made a half circle to spy at land which was unseeable from the 
trail. After a long swing we worked back into the path again. It had 
been raining during the morning and the wind blew strongly upon our 
left sides as we followed the path. 

About half-past one a granite monolith as large as a country cottage 
offered welcome shelter from the storm in which to dispose of 
luncheon. From this point, after a very short pipe following the food, 
we made up into the higher ground where Donald had spied some 
feeding animals. A good look through the glass, one which I verified 
through my binoculars, showed a fine, dark gray stag in the midst of 
half a hundred deer. 

The stalk to get within shooting distance of him was a rather ex- 
ceptional one, in that it called for moving over successive ridges 
which lay at right angles to the line of our advance. Never was a 
stalker's skill displayed to more advantage than in this movement. 
Donald made no mistakes. He always picked the dead ground. 

We passed each high point out of sight of the suspicious and ever- 
watchful deer. For, mark you well, these Scotch deer are far more 
shy than those I have found anywhere upon the American Con- 
tinent. Perhaps the open country in which they live explains this in 
part. As we drew near it became increasingly apparent that there 
were a number of hinds, far more watchful than the stags, between us 
and the object of our pursuit. 



62 CHAPTER IX. 

With the greatest care and circumspection, moving snakewise for 
the last hundred yards, we came out at last upon a minor hill of the 
high hills, from whence a view showed us that further advance was 
impossible. Donald? slipping the rifle from the case, at the same time 
indicated by a gesture of his forefinger that I should come forward. 
Field glass case and cap in my hand, I crawled level with him. I 
had just time to identify the gray stag I hoped to make mine when 
the big fellow moved into the recesses of a sheltering ravine and was 
lost to view. 

From where I lay hinds were to my right front within 125 yards. To 
where the stag disappeared was a bit better than 200 yards. The 
depression into which he had gone ran at right angles to the direction 
in which my rifle pointed, and it appeared to be a fault in the hill, open 
at either end, both openings being visible from my vantage point. My 
stag could go out at the other end, possibly 200 yards from the 
point of entrance; he might return the way he had come, or he could 
move up the large hill which lay beyond the small one covering him. 
In any event it appeared probable he would have to come into sight 
before he could leave the vicinity. 

I got into position and made myself as comfortable as possible in 
view of the driving rain which was now pouring down. Of course, 
I was as wet as a man could be and quite as much, of course, I soon 
grew so cold, so utterly chilled to the marrow of my bones, that I 
shivered as with a chill, and my teeth actually rattled until I feared 
the deer would hear the noise and take fright. 

I stood it as long as I could, then I whispered to Donald: "I'm too 
cold to shoot if the stag comes out. We must do something." Silently 
he beckoned to me and together we started down the hill on the 
side opposite to the deer. For a little way we went cautiously and 
then feeling confident that the high wind which blew over us would 
carry all sound away from our quarry, we began to run swiftly down 
the precipitous slope. 

We traveled for some hundred yards, when turning about, Donald 
led me up along almost the same way as fast as I could move, until 
he brought me out upon another little hill which lay just to the left 



"A GRAN' SHOT!" 63 

of the one previously chosen. Here I prepared myself a second time 
for a shot, and here also I found my stag still concealed. In no time 
at all, or so it seemed to me, I was as cold as ever. 

Donald had been watching me anxiously, and now when I felt I 
could endure the situation no longer, he questioned in subdued tones, 
"D'ye see yon staug at the right end of the ravine, nigh to the three- 
black rocks?" I nodded yes. "The General could shoot him," my 
stalker continued, "and then the gran' gray 'un might cam' out, an 
gi' us a shot." 

I made no comment. I simply said, "Shall I shoot this stag, Donald?" 
"Yes, yes, shoot un." 

The deer in question was a scant 200 yards to my right front; more- 
over, the rain which was slanting down hit upon the back and side 
of my head, so that it did not, as so often it had under similar 
circumstances, blur my shooting glasses beyond any power of eye to 
pierce. 

I swung the muzzle of my rifle cautiously in the direction of the 
unconscious stag until I got my view of him where he was outlined, 
a grayish brown smudge against a background of his own color. I 
quickly moved the rifle till sure I had it firmly grasped and confident 
that the sights were properly aligned with the front sight snugly in 
the bottom of that dangerous deep backsight, and then, with a point 
of aim which seemed to me the center of the body just back of his 
heart, I touched the trigger. 

At that very instant, so quickly that it seemed the bullet could 
hardly have sped so soon upon its deadly way, the stag collapsed as 
if smitten by lightning's bolt. It needed no expert eye to see that 
here was no wounded creature, but one stone dead. At the shot all 
the deer were in motion ; in a flash the big gray fellow I had first 
sought and who had been the object of the stalk came into view on 
the far side of the little hill racing up the higher hill beyond it at 
full speed, taking the ascent in great leaps. 

It needed but a touch to eject the cartridge case and drive a new 
shell home and by a little movement to put the sights in the vicinity 
of the bounding gray fellow. 

I knew what Donald expected; that I should wait until the stag 
stopped, but he was 250 yards away when he appeared and I had 



64 CHAPTER IX. 

seen deer run in that fashion on other days. When a stag seems to 
unloose all his energy with every leap you are not to expect him tc 
stop within shooting distance. His intentions are evident in such a 
case. He means to get out of harm's way before he subsides. 

So I knew this chap was as good as gone unless I fired while he 
ran. In the quick way in which one thinks under such circumstances 
I realized that to fire and hit him in the after part of the body and 
thus ruin a venison ham would be an unutterably ignominious act. 
I had to break his back or his neck as he traveled upward and away 
from me. Even as I thought and followed him with the rifle the 
sights seemed to show me that I had the right spot and I pulled. 
The bullet sped as true as a die, and if I fired ten thousand shots 
under similar circumstances I could never put one closer to the spot 
I had wished this one to go. 

At the sound of the shot the stag collapsed, waved his forefeet 
feebly in the air for a moment and then rolled and slid down the hill. 
He was dead when, racing across the broken ground, I got to him. 
The bullet had entered squarely in the middle of his back at the point 
where his suspenders would have crossed had the creature been a 
man and fully clothed. 

It was glorious good fortune. A double on stags is not so easy under 
any circumstances. 

While the necessary attentions were being shown the stags by Donald 
and the gillie who accompanied us, I made my way down the hill and 
along the trail to where ponies were waiting. These I sent up with 
another gillie in charge of them to bring down the game, while I 
trudged in to the L,odge. It was not more than half-past three o'clock. 

When I got in at five-thirty I was, though wet and bedraggled from 
my stalking, not unduly tired, although I had covered only a little 
less than thirty miles since morning. 

One incident of the double shot of the day is too good to be 
omitted. As I have said, Donald took the keenest interest in the 
sport; ever ready to excuse a bad shot, he was just as willing to praise 
a more lucky one. When I fired the first time from the hillock and 
the stag fell at the shot, he said, with satisfaction in his tones, "You 
got 'un, you got 'un ! A good shot !" and that was all. 



"A GRAN' SHOT!" 65 

But when the gray fellow stopped at the imperative summons of 
my rifle, stopped in mid career to tumble down the hill, the stolid 
phlegm of the sturdy Scotchman was torn from him as a tattered 
garment. As the beast fell, with the sure evidence of a mortal wound, 
and upon the heels of the shot, Donald, in vibrant tones, cried, "Ah, 
a gran' shot, a gran' shot — " and here he stopped to gasp, "Oh, sir, 
I never thocht ye'd shoot at 'un runnin', ah — ah — ah — I thocht ye'd wait 
for 'un to stop ! Ah, it was a gran' shot, a gran' shot !" 

His face was suffused, his eyes protruded from his head, he quivered 
in every muscle as he lay, the picture of the most intense delight and 
satisfaction. He had not stopped smiling when I left him to send up 
the ponies. I am sure he got quite as much satisfaction out of my 
lucky shot as came to me. 

The first stag was a five-pointer weighing 13 stone 6. The second, 
the gray fellow, a seven-pointer of 16 stone 10, or 234 pounds. Both 
were in prime condition. 



CHAPTER X. 



A LOST STAG. 



A.NNY and Donald were with other sportsmen on the next morn- 
ing and I had for my stalker John Mclntyre, he of the black 
brows and seeming incapacity to locate grouse. John was keen 
enough on deer; there could be no mistake about that, but his mind 
moved slowly; he was not a first-class stalker. For the greater part he 
acted as a gillie, but this day it was necessary that he should be sent out 
with me. 

With Donald, who had charge of the Warrior for the day, John 
and I with the accompanying gillies went along the same trail of many 
other days until we passed over the first high ridge and some of the 
broken ground beyond. Then to the left not over three-quarters of a 
mile from the trail there was discovered a band of thirty- five or 
forty deer, among them a good sized stag. 

Donald instructed John to stop with me in a sheltered ravine while 
he with the rest of the party moved on along the trail as if the deer had 
not been seen. They showed a little uneasiness as we observed them 
through our glasses, but did not take fright. After our companions 
had disappeared, John and I began our stalk. It was not a difficult 
one; there was a natural point of vantage from a hill in the im- 
mediate front, where two large stones made a sort of landmark which 
I had frequently noticed from the path. 

We made our way to these stones without detection and from 
here I was able to perceive the stag now desired, lying facing me, 
entirely surrounded by hinds and smaller stags. There was no pos- 
sibility of a shot at him under the conditions. There was nothing 
remaining for me but a wait. 

Though the sun shone brightly this morning for the moment, and 
I was only wet, as one might say, on the lower edges, having per- 



A LOST STAG. 67 

formed but a stalk of half a mile or so, I did not find it possible to 
lie on the wet ground for more than half an hour without becoming 
too cold for comfort. When I had about given up the situation as 
a hopeless one, the deer, probably roused by some scent from the 
party ahead, rose to their feet, but by ill fortune the hinds nearest 
us got up first, then all of them in a big body moved away. 

It was impossible to shoot, although I hoped and watched for an 
opening, without running a long chance of hitting a hind; so I was 
compelled to lie tight and watch my stag walk away. 

Strangely enough the deer changed their minds, after having gone 
four or five hundred yards, and began to feed; then they slowly 
worked back toward the point from which they had first been startled. 
In another hour they were back within 450 yards. Then John under- 
took to take me out of the place in which we were and by a round- 
about way to bring me out on the hillside at a new point which would 
be close enough for a shot. 

We made the stalk, but from lack of experience or because he 
wanted that inborn sense for stealth and secret approach which is 
an indispensable part of a stalker's equipment, John, though he got 
me close enough to the deer, about 200 yards, did so only at the cost 
of disturbing them, so, when I moved into firing position, they were 
alarmed and on foot. That would not have been serious but for the 
stag being surrounded on all sides by hinds. There, was no way I 
could fire at him without running the risk of hitting one of the others 
and that was not to be thought of. 

I kept the rifle as near on him as I could and hoped for an opening 
through which a shot could be delivered. Finally, at a distance just 
short of 400 yards when all hope had begun to disappear, the deer 
strung out in a longer line to get through a narrow way and I 
chanced a long and hard shot at the stag, now moving at good speed. 

I fired quickly, instinctively favoring the left a little, as my target 
was moving from right to left. The stag left the line of the others 
and made several bounds at a peculiar gait in a downhill direction. 
Then he went on, apparently quite as good as ever. I asked John, 
who was supposed to be watching the beast through his telescope, if 
he could tell where the shot had struck. He was unable to say. 



68 CHAPTER X. 

I got my field glasses on the stag as quickly as possible and it 
seemed to me that not only could I detect a strangeness in his gait 
as he ran on with the others, but the right foreleg, the one which 
had been most distant from me when I fired, had the appearance of 
being broken. 

I was greatly disturbed, and I blamed myself severely. I should 
never have taken such a shot. The distance was over-great, the time 
short, and the stag had been moving rapidly. I had been having 
such magnificent luck though, five stags in five shots, on two oc- 
casions, a double on stags, that I suppose I had grown over con- 
fident. Rather impressed, as one sometimes becomes, you know, 
with the feeling that it is impossible to miss. 

From my experience with deer in other places I reasoned that this 
fellow, if he had a broken leg, would go on for some considerable 
distance, then he would lie down. If I could locate the spot where he 
stopped for his rest it might be possible to pick him up again, be- 
cause if he were not disturbed quickly he would lie almost as close 
as a quail, and I could have a chance for a shot which would put 
him out of his misery. 

I was, of course, distressed, because of wounding instead of killing 
the animal, but there was no use feeling too badly over it; it was 
done and could not be helped. The next thing was to get that stag 
if there was any way to do it. 

We climbed quickly to a high point and saw the line of deer come 
out on a ridge further on, from which they disappeared into a great 
corrie with lips a mile apart and which had a depth of near to a 
thousand feet. I felt sure the deer would be some time in getting 
out of that place, so we sat down here and lunched. Then we went 
on to further high ground which permitted us to command the corrie 
where the deer had disappeared and the exit from it. 

Just as we came in sight of the way out we discovered, in a straight 
line perhaps a mile and a half distant, the herd of deer moving up 
the steep hillside across the short level space and disappearing, in turn, 
on the far side. I had John and the gillie put their telescopes on 
the herd and I watched them quite closely with my fine, clear little 
Warner and Swasey prism binocular. 



A LOST STAG. 69 

I cautioned the men particularly to identify, if they could, the 
stag I had shot at for the purpose of seeing in what way he ap- 
peared to be wounded. They seemed in some doubt as the last of 
the animals disappeared, but John said finally he thought all the 
deer appeared to be unharmed, and he said he believed, although he 
was not sure, that the animal I had shot was among them. I could 
not credit that statement as the true state of affairs. 

We were just about to get up and go on when, still gazing through 
my glasses, I spied a moving object traveling in the trace of the 
herd which had so lately gone from sight. I called, quickly, "John, 
there's my deer ! Just going up where the others did. Look at him 
and see if his right foreleg is not broken?" It was true. It seemed 
almost incredible and I would never have believed it if I had not 
seen similar wonderful efforts on the part of three-legged deer upon 
other occasions; that this stag should follow the herd over the rough 
ground and be but some three or four hundred yards behind. 

The three glasses glued to him seemed to give our hunted creature 
a new lease of life. He went on the way the other deer had traveled, 
disappearing in his turn. Then a portion of the original herd with 
our wounded one 200 yards or more in the rear came in sight, further 
along to the left toward the hilltop and again disappeared. We 
waited for a time sufficient to justify me in believing that the deer 
were not coming into our range of vision again ; therefore, we must go 
to where we could see. 

I told John we would have to run to the top of the mountain 
where we had last seen the deer, and I instructed him to go on as 
fast as he could, which would surely be at a greater speed than I 
could compass. When he came to the top he was to spy in every 
direction for the wounded stag. I would catch up with him as quickly 
as I could. 

Running and making one's very best speed over rock-strewn and 
precipitous ground is an exciting sport. I recommend it to those 
who suffer from a sluggish liver or an overpowering ennui. It was 
a windy day but no rain was falling. I had not noticed the wind 
particularly until I came out upon the crest well blown and with 
pulses which throbbed furiously, to find myself battling against a 
wind which almost took me from my feet. 



70 CHAPTER X. 

John and I spied upon the herd, soon discovered moving further 
and further away from us, but neither his long telescope nor my 
good held glasses could find the hit stag in the lot. 

We decided to work back along the mountainside in the hope of 
locating by blind luck the place where it seemed possible the stag 
might have lain down. Hunting for the proverbial needle in the hay 
stack would be an easy task compared to that which John and I had 
set for ourselves in trying to locate the wounded animal. 

Not only was there available some square miles of broken ground 
offering much cover for this evasive beast to lie in, but fold after 
fold of the hill slope was invisible from the one on either side as 
this mountain did not go down in one straight line, but in suc- 
cessive folds. 

We came at length to what seemed the end of all our resources, and 
stopped to talk it over. It did not seem possible the deer could be 
ahead of us. He might be anywhere behind us, down or up, the 
hillside. We might, I reasoned, have passed within fifty feet of him 
in the condition I imagined he then was, and he would be very apt 
to simply lie closer and pay no attention to us. 

In search of a clue which might guide us, I requested John to 
point out the place where he had last seen the stag. He did so and 
I identified almost exactly the same spot. I reasoned from this 
that the stag might have turned back along the hillside instead of 
going further away from us. With this idea in mind, I told John 
that we would go on for another two hundred yards or so to the 
next shoulder which came down at right angles, and if we did not 
then see a sign of our quarry, we would give him up. 

While I was talking to the stalker, I was filling my pipe. I stopped 
after he had begun the forward movement, to light it. I looked up 
from this important occupation, upon a startled exclamation from 
John, to see beyond him, not over fifty feet in his front, our wounded 
stag making his way rapidly down the hill to our left front, his right 
foreleg showing plainly broken and useless. 

John had the rifle; the rifle was in the leather scabbard and instead 
of rushing to me and at the same time drawing the weapon from 
its covering, John stood in apparent stupefaction and looked. I had 
to run to him, take the case from his hand and then drag the rifle 



A LOST STAG. 71 

from it with feverish fingers before I could think of shooting. Of 
course, while there was a cartridge in the chamber the safety was on; 
one touch of the thumb put it flat as I threw the rifle to my shoulder, 
but at that instant my deer bobbed out of sight behind a fold of the 
hill a hundred yards away. 

I ran at my top speed to the place where I had seen him last, but 
he was out of sight. I thought he might have turned to the left 
and I ran in that direction to the next view point. No stag in 
sight. Then I turned sharply to the right and sprinted for all I was 
worth for a hundred yards or more, this time to see the stag nearly 
four hundred yards down the hill and making away at an incredible 
rate of speed. He literally seemed to fly through the air. It was 
marvelous how that deer could and did disappear on three legs. 

We sat down upon the hillside, John and I, and I finished the 
operation of loading my pipe. I did not swear, although I felt like 
it. Meanwhile, through the glasses our stag could be seen making 
his way down into the bottom of a large corrie and then across toward 
the high wall which rose on the other side. Finally, he disappeared 
in a ravine two miles or more away. I gave John instructions to sit 
on the hillside and watch very carefully through his glasses the point 
where the deer had gone out of sight, while I, this time with the 
rifle uncased 'in my own hand, went across to see if I could, by the 
faintest possible chance, find him. 

I did not expect to, because, if my recollection served me right, a 
deer which could run at all under such circumstances, and this one 
most assuredly could do something in that line, would continue to run 
until he fell if disturbed from his first rest, and that might be for 
miles and miles. 

I made a fruitless search in the vicinity of the ravine. John came 
over and we beat out every inch of ground near the place possible 
for a hiding point, until darkness had closed around us. But no sign 
of the stag could we find. After dark we made along the shore of a 
small loch a mile in length toward the path. It was bad going. 

The deep, sticky, peat gullies and hags, the loose, sharp cornered 
stones, the sudden breaks and falls in the ground made us go care- 
fully, and even then furnished more than one tumble. We came out 
after a time upon the path none the worse for it except for the mud 
which was never yet known to seriously injure anyone. 



CHAPTER XI. 

AN UNSUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENT. 

I ATTEMPTED an experiment the next day and wished afterward I 
had not. There was a rifle in the Lodge fitted with a telescopic 
sight. I had never used this kind of a device for shooting game, and 
I thought I should like to try. It was said the telescope was ac- 
curately adjusted to the rifle. I asked about it because I knew from 
range experience how serious is the problem of attaching a telescopic 
sight to a rifle of high power in such a way as to insure no deviations 
from accurate sighting. 

I showed forethought enough to attempt to sight the rifle in before 
I went into the deer forest, but I had only an opportunity for a few 
shots and while those all went wild except one, I thought the fault 
was my own and not that of the sight and rifle combination. Later I 
discovered my mistake. 

John was my stalker again and we went in an entirely new direction. 
For the greater part our way lay over high grasslands under which 
the water spread everywhere and gave tokens of its presence by 
occasionally lapping over the tops of the shoes and always by the 
squish-squash which marked one's footsteps. The fall weather in 
these higher altitudes is not expected to be fine; one anticipates rain. 

Anticipations in the present case were not disappointed and on the 
whole, I do not object to a certain amount of rain, but the sort of 
downfall that came this day and the way it assailed me did ruffle 
my temper somewhat. We were walking straight into a high wind. 
The rain slanted down with the moving air and pelted us squarely in 
the faces. That meant a blur over my shooting spectacles, which 
made it impossible for me to walk twenty feet without having the 
impression of marching bodily into a heavy fog. 

Frequent applications of the handkerchief availed momentarily to 
remove the trouble, but after a time even that temporary relief was 



AN UNSUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENT. 73 

denied me, because the handkerchief became so wet it only smeared 
the glasses when I tried to use it. I was forced finally to put them 
down low on my nose and make the best of it, looking over the tops 
of them. And then the rain hit my eyes, which are none too strong 
anyway, and I confess to being just a little cross. 

We lunched at half past one, where a very uncomfortable, wet, soggy 
bank only partly sheltered us from the storm, and then we went on 
in a wide swing that brought us into Glen Muick, a mile or more 
below where I killed my first stag. Here John discovered deer and 
led a good stalk which brought us into a burn of no great size run- 
ning between walls six to eight feet high. We went down this until 
we came within 225 yards of a fine stag, lying down among a mixed 
lot of twenty or more youngsters and hinds. 

When I poked the muzzle of my rifle over the bank through the 
grass in the direction of the unsuspecting deer, I had to move my 
head around for a time until my eye could accommodate itself to the 
'scope. Then it was necessary to change the position of the tube to 
find the deer. When I did get the instrument pointing toward him, 
the magnification was such that I could actually see his eyes as he 
lay facing me, while his breast below the head seemed to me an 
ample mark for an accurate rifle fitted with the telescopic sight. 

With this thought in mind, I carefully centered the cross hairs on 
a little lighter colored spot which seemed about the middle of his 
chest, and gently pulled the trigger. I was so astounded when the 
stag went up and ran away that for several seconds I failed to snap 
in a loaded cartridge and then again I was remiss because I forgot all 
about the open sight which lay alongside the 'scope, and frantically 
hunted for my stag through the lenses. 

It was no use. I never found that stag through the telescope and 
I had to content myself with John's sympathetic remark that it was 
"always verra hard to shoot a staug lyin' doon." 

Later on the same afternoon I caught sight of a deer down hill 
to our left. That was 600 yards away. Just the upper part of his 
horns I could pick out, and from where we were upon sloping 
grassland with no concealment except that offered by the folds of the 
ground, there was no chance to see more without exposing ourselves 



74 CHAPTER XL 

to the sight of the deer. We therefore made a stalk to a point from 
which a shot could be fired if a shootable stag were found in the lot. 

Taking advantage of a slight depression here and there and by 
very careful work, we finally came to within practically 200 yards of 
the deer. When we looked them over there were three stags, one a' 
very fair sized fellow. I asked John what he thought. He answered 
that though they were not "verra large, the General may shoot one 
if he likes." 

Through the telescope I had pointed at them, that I might look 
them over, the best seemed to weigh not over 185 pounds, and he 
was evidently a young animal. I whispered to John that I would not 
shoot, and we commenced a retrograde movement. We climbed back- 
ward with as much skill as we had crawled forward, and rose to our 
feet when the ground would permit us to do so, without having 
frightened the deer in the least. 

It was rather a long walk back to the L,odge and there were times 
when it seemed possible we might be able to make another stalk, but 
no chance for a shot came, although just before dark, when we were 
seated upon the edge of a long slope spying below, a young stag 
put his head over a spur of our ridge about 250 yards from us. I 
swung the telescope very quietly in his direction and had a fine view 
of him while he waited and watched to see what we were. 

We sat perfectly still. The wind was from him to us and the 
light was exceedingly dim. Every line of his tense neck and alertly 
poised head bespoke apprehension and heralded instant flight if his 
suspicions were confirmed. Finally, however, instead of the expected 
rush from the dangerous locality, he withdrew very slowly, moving in 
a direction at right angles to that required for direct departure. 

Waiting for ten or fifteen seconds and feeling him gone, we arose 
slowly to our feet, when instantly, the head of the wily animal 
appeared for a moment to as quickly vanish as its owner made 
lightning progress out of the country. The clever beast had simply 
temporarily withdrawn as a blind, feeling sure if we were alive we 
would move and that a return after a short pause would disclose the 
truth to him. 



AN UNSUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENT. 75 

I felt that I had no time to attempt the adjustment of the telescope 
which had foiled me, to the rifle, so I set it aside and the next morning 
returned to my own faithful weapon. 

My stalk was with Danny, in the far ground of the stony dykes 
where I had been with him on two other occasions, once to miss a 
steeply downhill shot, after the grand stalk down the dangerous face, 
while the Chief killed his deer, the other to pursue phantom stags 
all day and fire not at all. 

The mist on this day was the heaviest I had yet found in Scotland. 
It shut down about us so thickly at times that it was not possible to 
see twenty feet in any direction. It was like a London fog, only 
lacking the smells of the city to be quite the counterpart of that 
metropolitan murkiness. 

We had to sit down upon the mountainside and wait and wait and 
wait, one hour, two hours, three hours, in the cold and the damp 
for the fog to clear or lift. Every few moments Danny or one of the 
two gillies with us would say, "Weel, I'm thinkin' 'twill be better 
syne," but the "syne" was a long one. Finally, after about three 
hours there did seem to be more light, although the fog was not 
dissipated, and we moved on to the top. 

Here the fog had turned by now into rain which, driven by a 
high wind, made itself felt beyond any attempts to ignore it. Looking 
over the edge of the high rock dyke, which formed the limit of the 
particular mountain we were on, the fog in the valley below resembled 
great masses of slightly soiled white cotton drawn hither and thither 
and yon by great invisible fingers impatient of its presence and de- 
sirous of removing it. 

We also were impatient of it, because we felt, though we could not 
see, the presence of deer in the lower levels. The wind on the top 
by some slanting process of its own, or it may be because it veered 
in direction, began to cut into glen and corrie and tumble the mist 
out ahead of it. 

There came breaks in the curtain, which hid the floor of the nearest 
big corrie from us and through one of these Danny soon picked up 
a good herd of deer. They were not at all satisfied with themselves 
or their position and were moving around most restlessly. We watched 
them a long time before the experienced stalker made up his mind to 



76 CHAPTER XI. 

attempt an approach. Then, when he did so, in the cleared condition 
of the atmosphere, it was seen that the stalk required passing within 
sight of three other lots of deer. 

Thus Danny's task was quadrupled. He had to stalk so that we 
should be invisible from four points at once. It seemed a task beyond 
the power of man, but my lengthy Scotchman was successful, although 
what he did availed us not at all, for the deer we sought moved 
part way up the shoulder of the mountain. As they came quartering 
toward us I felt they had not seen nor scented us. 

We now had to climb back up to the top of the mountain down 
whose face we had so cautiously and laboriously moved for at least 
a thousand feet. From the top Danny spied our animals, this time 
apparently settled because some of them were lying down and the 
rest quietly feeding. 

We worked our way along the summit for some distance and then 
Danny motioned to me and whispered that the only way to get at 
the deer was by stalking down a very steep grassy face for a hun- 
dred yards, half of this distance within plain sight of the deer if they 
should look up. I told him it would be a new experience and he 
could lead on. 

That was a most engaging stalk. I enjoyed every minute of it. 
The ground, just about as sharply tilted as any ground could be and 
still hold grass, or itself, for that matter, clung to the face of the 
mountain. Danny went first, flat upon his stomach, digging hands 
and elbows and knees and toes into the soil and I followed literally 
upon his heels, for sometimes my body would move forward more 
rapidly than I wished and my face actually touch the hobnailed 
bottoms of his boots. 

I had my field glasses in a case suspended from my shoulder. This 
swung around underneath me and digging into the earth acted as a 
brake. I attempted to make no move until I was sure my toe-hold 
gained by pressing the toe of my heavy shoe, protuberantly hobnailed, 
into the bank would make me feel reasonably safe. 

At that it was touch and go often whether I would start a sliding, 
downhill movement which would only end at the bottom of the tidy 



AN UNSUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENT. 77 

little precipice of several hundred feet, that furnished the lower edge 
of the glass slope. I literally hugged the earth all the way. 

I recall that a feeling of stern necessity for getting as low to the 
ground as I could that the deer might not be alarmed, caused me to 
never raise my eyes from what was immediately in front of me, and 
it was thus I saw the single barreled small field glass of Danny, just 
under my nose where it had slipped from his breast pocket as he 
preceded me. 

Deer, like so many other animals, are more easily approached from 
above and this face was literally so perpendicular that even had the 
deer felt themselves in danger I doubt if they would have suspected 
the approach of an enemy down this dangerous slope unless they 
had caught the scent. The wind was quite right for us, and the 
stalk entirely successful, in so far as it put us out upon a rocky ledge 
after the crawl down and a climb up, a ledge which was not over 180 
yards from where the nearest deer lay. 

With some difficulty Danny succeeded in pointing out to me the 
shootable stag. This fellow lay stern on. He had been rolling in a 
peat hag, too, and as he lay among peat hags it was almost im- 
possible to distinguish him in the failing light of the late afternoon. I 
got my position from which to fire and looked as intently as I could 
through the sights. 

I soon decided it would be impossible to get in a shot at him 
until he rose, therefore I had another one of those wait-and-get-cold 
experiences which had now grown familiar. It was not alone the 
fact that I soon was shivering in my wet clothes which made me 
anxious, but the light was rapidly fading out of the West, and there 
were not many more minutes left in which an aimed shot could be 
fired. 

In my lowest practicable voice I intimated to Danny that it would 
be necessary to do something. He offered this whispered observa- 
tion : "Some gentlemen would like me to whustle 'um." I answered 
him, "Go ahead and whistle, Danny. Anything to get them up." 

Danny gave one long, shrill whistle. I had the rifle pointed as 
close as I could hold it on my stag, and I expected to put a shot 
toward him as soon as he gave me a chance by starting to rise. Some- 
what to my astonishment nothing happened. I turned to Danny to 



78 CHAPTER XL 

say, "Whistle again," when his remark, "They're off," brought my 
eyes back again to the deer. They were up and moving away. The 
whistle had reached them, but apparently by a slower route than I 
had anticipated. 

I was a little flurried by the incident, I will admit, and my stag 
moving straight away from me on ground which gave me no chance 
to shoot him in the back had no tendency to calm my nerves. The 
result was that when he turned to the right very slightly so that a 
section perhaps three inches wide of his shoulder might have been 
said to be visible beyond his flank, I attempted to put a bullet in that 
section. 

But as I pulled I knew I had favored the left a little too much. My 
fear was, of course, that I should shoot to the right and thus hit 
the deer in the ham. The mistake I actually made was the reverse 
of this. I wabbled at the moment of firing to the left until the bullet 
must have sped harmlessly by the very nose of my intended victim. 

Near the crest of a hill my deer was out of sight in a twinkling 
before I could finish saying to Danny, "I missed him to the left !" 
Danny, good kind soul that he was, used a great deal more emphasis 
than I would have thought of applying under the same circumstances 
to assure me how hard it was for a man to shoot in such light and 
when as "cauld" as I was, at a moving deer, plastered with mud that 
made him look just like the mud itself, which was all very well, as an 
evidence of the fine quality of Danny's sportsmanship, but there was 
no palliation possible in my case. I just missed and that was all 
there was to it. 

But I did not feel very badly over it. I had killed five stags without 
a miss. They told me my score of deer per shot was far above the 
average. I was having one of the most enjoyable experiences of my 
life, the rare combination of hard mountain climbing with enough 
spice from the pursuit of game to make it piquant, which appealed 
to me beyond any form of sport I had previously indulged in, and a 
miss or two or even more could not make me down hearted. I was 
only sorry that Danny should be compelled to apologize for me. He 
had made such a magnificent stalk under circumstances so difficult 
that it really seemed ungrateful of me to fail in my shot. 



AN UNSUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENT. 79 

The walk back to the Lodge was without exceptional interest, but 
I enjoyed it hugely, because after the first mile my blood was moving 
merrily through my veins and I lost the feeling of chill which had 
been almost constantly with me since my first advent into the world 
of fog in the early morning. 



CHAPTER XII. 

JOHN AND I GO TO THE HIGH FI<ATS. 

BLACK browed John had me again on the day after I had missed 
the slant-wise stag and we went to the plateau land of our other 
stalk, but on this day the sun shone, oh, most merrily and 
graciously the sun shone; and the air was clear, as clear as a crystal 
bell. 

I vowed the discomforts and hardships of a thousand days like the 
one just passed, wiped out and forever obliterated by one hour of 
such supreme bodily comfort and satisfactory elevation of mind as 
the warm sun and the sweet wind and the fair, friendly hills, and 
the twinkling lochs and the singing burns and the dancing blood gave 
me. 

And when we had to sit for a little time on a grassy bank, for a 
wonder almost dry, it seemed to me I had in the sweet aroma of 
my dear old pipe a physical gratification and enjoyment beyond classi- 
fication or expression. When John was spying from the point near 
where I sat making sweet medicine with my pipe, five deer were 
visible and soon others. 

A large herd of seventy or eighty animals in all was on the move. 
They were more than a mile from us. The two telescopes of John 
and the gillie, Duncan, and my field glasses followed them on. They 
were making a journey. That was certain. Occasionally an individual 
would take a hurried nibble of grass, but that was exceptional. They 
kept walking on almost as steadily as a flock of sheep driven by a 
shepherd. Their course would cause them to disappear behind the 
crest of a grassy hill a mile and a half in front of us. 

When they were out of sight we were on foot and moving in their 
direction. We approached the top with caution. There was nothing 



JOHN AND I GO TO THE HIGH FLATS. 81 

one could gather which was at all useful in determining where these 
deer had gone, but once a view from the crest became ours and the 
story took a different turn. 

We looked over the reaches of a down slope extending for half a 
mile to a valley, the valley, in turn, half a mile or more wide at this 
point; in its lowest part a sizeable burn, on the far side at its edge 
another hill like ours, rising gradually up to the sky, between the 
hills, in view but on the far side of the stream, over a hundred deer, 
large and little, unconscious of our presence, but not all content, for 
the rutting season had just begun and the stags were mortal enemies 
now where they had but lately been as friendly as brothers. 

Through the glasses the whole herd, brought close by the magic of 
the optician aided by the clear air of the day, were as if at our feet, 
to watch as we would. And there was nothing else to do but watch, 
because the little stream which flowed between the deer and us 
marked the limit of the march. That is to say, the extreme edge of 
the Benmore deer forest in that direction. On the far side of it, 
although the land was also that of my host, a lease ran on its broad 
acres to another sportsman. 

So I say, all we could do was lie upon the grass-clad hill top and 
watch our deer, now joined to another herd, feeding, fighting and 
making love at their leisure, as safe from us as if in another world. 
It was not so unpleasant, either. I could have wished, perhaps, a 
shot at that fine sturdy fellow whose strength put all the other stags 
to flight, but then why remove him? I rather thought it better as 
it was. 

My opportunities for observing the habits of the deer at the mating 
season were never better. These stags had for their ways those of 
stags everywhere, I imagine; and they herded their harems of soft- 
eyed hinds with as much care as I have seen a horse ranger on the 
Western plains ride herd upon a wild lot of cayuses. 

When the stag was upon the one side of his little family herd some 
interloper would approach from the other; whereupon the lordling 
would rush frantically in that direction, antlers down and neck hairs 
bristling. If the stranger thought well enough of himself to do battle 
he stood fast and the antagonists met head on. 



82 CHAPTER XII. 

I remember when I was a boy going to school I used to play 
"rooster fight," a game in which two adversaries put their shoulders 
together and each tried by main strength to push the other back. The 
one giving ground was defeated. This seemed to be about the program 
for the stags, substituting heads for shoulders. 

Although I saw them make lunges at each other with their needle- 
pointed antlers, such severe treatment rarely seemed necessary. Two 
stags met, encountered, did each his best to push the other stag, one 
gave back and loped away to leave the other master of the field and 
head of his transitory household. 

I would have been content to watch the deer longer, but John, 
feeling sure they were not for us, because without intent to return to 
our side of the land, wanted to move on that he might give me a 
shot somewhere else. I knew what was in the big fellow's mind. 
This was the third day I had been deer stalking with him. Once I 
had broken a beast's leg, once I had missed (the day with the 
telescope), and on this third one the whole desire of his heart was 
to bring me close enough to a stag for a shot. 

We covered a vast amount of ground this day, as we walked rapidly 
and only paused for a few moments to lunch, so that about an hour 
before sunset — unchecked, except where we had once stalked to a 
vantage point near two hinds hoping there might be a stag near — we 
came in sight of another large herd of deer. I counted 120. There 
were probably more. 

There were two or three good stags in this lot, but they were out 
upon what looked like a perfectly flat and level plain and the chances 
of approaching them — although the wind, which had been blowing 
wrongly, turned almost at the moment we first saw the deer until 
it was quite from them to us — seemed small. 

After an examination of the ground through his telescope, which 
consumed a full fifteen minutes of the precious daylight left to us, 
John began to stalk; a stalk which was to continue for over three 
miles, through little depressions, along small burns, in them, over 
them and by them, to a scene at last like this: Two hot, perspiring 
men, one a black-browed, brawny Scotchman in tweeds; the other, the 
American who writes this; behind them a third figure, the gillie 
Duncan. The two first lying flat-spread in the grass of a little round 



JOHN AND I GO TO THE HIGH FLATS. 83 

mound, not quite a hill, in a light so faint through the sun's absence 
and by cause of approaching night, that it could just be shot in, and 
that was all. 

To their front, oh, say two hundred yards, within a yard, a fine 
stag outlined on the edge of a hill until he looked less than half the 
distance away; and as we are watching these men we see the one 
who is to shoot reaching cautiously back with his sole and single 
hand, the left, to take the now unscabbarded rifle which the stalker 
has slipped from its receptacle, and made ready for him. 

Mind you, they are both lying as flat to the ground as men can 
crowd. In front of the one who hopes to shoot is already the little 
brown field glass case with his yellowish old velveteen cap atop. Fit 
rest, he thinks, for what he hopes will be a telling shot. He is reach- 
ing, I say, for the rifle which the stalker thrusts swiftly but silently 
toward him, when his ear is assailed by "They're off, they're off !" 
in tones like those an angry dog uses when a bone has been taken 
from him. 

No wonder John was angry. I would have been feeling as he did, 
in his place, for as I flung my eyes back to where the stag had stood 
his place was vacant. He had vanished over the edge of the hill from 
me as if swallowed up by an opening of the earth. There was nothing 
to do but to get upon our feet, slip the rifle back in its covering and 
fall into the regular tramp for the path which was to take us back 
to the Lodge. 

Half way to the path, well, say a mile and a half from where the 
stalk ended, it was quite fully dark, and now, as if to add to poor 
John's mortification and disappointment, we walked within seventy- 
five yards of three fine stags which stood and looked upon us, or so 
it seemed, and smiled as one would think, to feel themselves safe. I 
have a notion that John would have been quite willing for me to take 
a shot at these, and I felt confident I could have hit one at the short 
range, regardless of the fact that it would have been impossible to 
see either front or rear sight distinctly, but I did not feel myself so 
abjectly in need of a stag as to justify shooting one at short range 
and in the dark. 

When we got to the path five miles from the Lodge, John and 
Duncan, as by custom, fell into the rear and I swung out on my own 



84 CHAPTER XII. 

for the L,odge. I moved on at a merry clip, and while I regretted, 
to be sure, the long stalk which had ended in a blank, I found the 
day in retrospect not the least good of the many grand Highland 
days I had had. 

It was quite dark, because the moon had not put in an appearance, 
when crossing a large burn two miles from my destination, I had 
what might easily have been a most serious mishap. The way of 
crossing this particular stream was by stepping from one large stone 
to another. The water was about three feet deep and it ran with 
great swiftness. 

The stones, various heights above it as the stage of its flow varied, 
were large, irregular shaped and generally protruding about two feet 
from the surface. They would have offered a good enough foothold 
for a hobnailed shoe had they not been so far apart. As it was, in 
the very middle of the stream, there was a space of at least four feet 
which had to be bridged by a step. 

I misjudged my distance in the dark at this long reach and though 
my foot struck the rock in front it slipped and I had to spring with 
all the force I could gather to the next rock, swinging forward my 
other foot as I leaped. This foot, in turn, struck the object for 
which it was intended, but it also slipped and I plunged headlong upon 
the boulder-strewn bank of the stream. 

The points of contact were the end of my short arm and my right 
knee. I thought I had broken both, but rubbing and what I could do 
at the moment gave me reason to believe that I had not actually frac- 
tured a bone. I got up and hobbled on. The further I went the 
more easily I walked and I got to the Lodge with nothing more 
than a perceptible limp and some uncomfortable pains from bruised 
bones, but not otherwise the worse for wear. 

My knee was gaily colored in beautiful browns and purples and 
puffed to perfection when I dressed the next morning, but I was con- 
fident it would carry me through what was to be my last day's stalk 
in the Highlands. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

DONALD TAKES ME FOR THE LAST STALK. 

AND now for me came the designation of a stalker and a spot 
which above all others most pleased me. I was to go with 
Donald, Donald of my first deer, Donald of my lucky double 
when I happened to get the flying big gray fellow on the mountainside, 
after I had killed his smaller brother, a few seconds before. Donald 
who had given me my first taste of the hardships and the goodships, 
the toil and the rest, the misery and the joy of Highland deer stalking. 
Together we were to go to far Corrie Vattie, twelve miles out. 

We started early, and taking notice of my stiff knee, I rode for the 
greater part of the way up. It was a misty, rainy day. I remember 
how misty and rainy because after we had come down from the 
ponies; and made our first climb and spied deer and found hinds in 
the way; and tried to make them move on by putting a handkerchief 
up by means of a stick, above the hiding rock; and after they had 
made haste away, instead of going cautiously, and frightened the 
whole herd; we selected a stag and I had tried to shoot. 

But the rain met me full in the face and my glasses would not stay 
clear long enough for me to align the sights. I tried once and I tried 
twice; I tried many times. It was impossible. My eyes are not strong 
and there is a defect of vision through astigmatism. The light was 
poor, but I had to do something, so I pulled the shooting glasses down 
low on my nose and tried a quick though careful aim with the naked 
eye. 

I felt satisfied at the first attempt and pulled, to see the following 
sink and sway and then to my anxiety a movement to the front by 
my deer. But he was not to escape. He had not gone many feet, 
until he stopped, swayed for an instant and then crashed broadside 
down, legs extended, obviously dead at the moment. 



86 CHAPTER XIII. 

It had taken time for all this. It was now after two o'clock. After 
this stag had been attended to and drawn to where signals could bring 
the gillies with the pony to take him further and then home, I asked 
Donald if he thought it would be possible to get another stag before 
dark; a stag with a good head; not necessarily a grand one, but a 
representative one, which I could have mounted and take back to 
America with me. He would promise nothing except to do his best. 

The weather was very thick by now and it was impossible to spy 
successfully for any considerable distance. We therefore had to move 
rapidly from place to place, covering ground with our feet that we 
might have swept with the glasses if the weather had been better. We 
came quickly to trotting, because it was apparent dark would descend 
early and Donald was as eager as I for that seventh and last stag, 
with the fair head. 

Just like looking for anything else that you particularly wish to find 
our search for a good stag on this afternoon seemed doomed to failure. 
Here and there we went, trotting often, actually running downhill 
frequently, and for this kind of exploring covering a really large 
amount of territory, but nowhere did we see the stag we sought. 
Then at Donald's suggestion we went down upon the path and started 
in the direction of the Lodge. He felt we would have an opportunity 
there to make more distance in less time and could quite as reason- 
ably expect to get sight of a stag from vantage points along the trail 
as from any others. 

We had gone perhaps a mile down this trail and were within half 
an hour of dark when Donald sat down upon a heather bank to spy. 
While his glass was glued to the landscape I heard a stag roar. You 
will remember the rutting season had commenced a day or two before 
and the first symptoms of it were now in evidence. Quickly the 
Scotchman looked up from his spying and said, "Where wad that 
staug be, General?" 

I replied; "Just over there, Donald, about half a mile in that di- 
rection. Look and see if you can find him." He turned the glass 
toward where I pointed. "Well, I queried, crisply," "do you see him, 
do you see him?" 

"No, sir. I see no staug, but I do see two hinds." "Well, Donald," 
I instructed, "it's no use looking any longer for the stag. He's there, 
if the hinds are there. Is there any chance to stalk hinz?" 



DONALD TAKES MB FOR THE LAST STALK. 87 

"There's a wee bit chance, sir. Aboot one in a hunner," my cautious 
stalker answered. "If we go by the loch we may do it, but the time is 
verra short." 

"Yes," I replied; "I know that. We've only a few minutes to make 
this stalk, and it's the last stalk I shall have in the Highlands. If 
there's one chance in a hundred or one in a thousand we'll take it. 
Let's get on as fast as we can." 

Nothing loath, Donald slipped back off the hill, and then together 
we ran down the far side of it to the loch-side where, turning to the 
left, we made on as fast as we could go, sometimes in the water, 
sometimes out of it, but always hurrying, hurrying, hurrying, one foot 
after the other as fast as we could put them down, racing with dark- 
ness; moving to beat the chariots of the night. 

The loch end gained, we took to the peat hags and the shelters of 
bracken-clad low hills, and we came at just dark, or perhaps an instant 
before, to a heather hidden mound where we lay panting while Donald 
said, "Can you see the two hinds?" I could, because they were upon 
the sky line and I looked toward the West. There was a little light 
left but it was very little. Still I could see the two female deer. 

"Do you see -the stag, Donald?" I gasped, for I had used about all 
the breath I had in reaching this point. "Yes, sir," was my man's 
reply. "Two other hinds and the staug are just this way from the two 
hinds you see." 

"How far is it, Donald, to the two hinds?" 

"A good three hunner yards, sir." 

"Can we get closer?" 

"There's na chance sir, an' the light'll be gone in a meenit." 

I could not see the stag. He was entirely out of my sight in the 
semi-darkness of the hillside, but Donald with sharper eyes and the 
advantage of his telescope could see. Now he asked : "Could ye shoot 
the staug if he came out on the sky line, sir?" "I could try," I answered. 
"Weel, ye'll be wantin' to get ready then, because he's like to be coming 
up any meenit." 

I had sunk my elbows deep into the thick heather of the hill and 
had not bothered to bring forward my field glass case because the 
thickly placed shrubs seemed to give support enought for my rifle. 



88 CHAPTER XIII. 

Looking through the sights I could dimly discern the front sight and 
the top of the rear sight, which, as you will remember, was a wide V 
and a deep one. The narrow bottom of that V where the bead of my 
front sight must needs go if I were to have a normal aim was as 
invisible as if non-existent. 

I knew instantly of course that I should have to fire with a coarse 
sight. I had little time to think and had no idea how much difference 
changing my sighting would make at 300 yards. No opportunity was 
given me for lengthy consideration of it, which was perhaps just as 
well. As I lay and peered forward toward that dim hill with its two 
hinds faintly, very faintly silhouetted, came the stag in sight. 

He was facing uphill and I could see the outlines of his body, but 
none too clearly. At the view of him, at the very instant of his coming 
I determined to hold with my coarse sight half way between his body 
and the earth line. The moment he was fully exposed, gaining this 
hold, I pressed the trigger. 

At the sound of the shot he whirled as if upon a pivot, facing 
downhill now instead of up, still outlined against what light there was 
left in the Western sky. Quickly as he had turned, just as quickly 
my hand had snapped open and flung to the bolt of my dear little 
gun , and before he could move or think of moving another step 
my second shot was on its way, pointed this time at the earth line 
itself where the sky marked its ending. 

I would you might have seen what happened then. It seemed to 
me that the instant my forefinger contracted the stag went into the 
air as if propelled by a catapult. It looked like many feet, he rose; 
his forelegs doubled back under him; hind legs extended, he sprang 
one great mighty, glorious leap into space and then disappeared into 
nothingness, for the moment he came to the level of the earth again 
he was out of my sight. 

Donald, his voice vibrant with emotion, intense, significant and 
strained to a screaming point, fairly exploded at me : "You got un ! 
You got un ! You got un !" Every nerve in me was tingling, and his 
words stung me like an electric shock. 

It was a difficult shot to try. Anybody would say that, and it was 
one chance in a hundred, yes, one in a thousand that it could be made. 



DONALD TAKES ME FOR THE LAST STALK. 89 

If I had done it, it was by good luck and an inspirational selection 
of the right point of hold. 

With a voice that trembled in spite of me, I asked : "Donald, do 
you think he's dead or only wounded?" "Oh," gave me back the 
stalker, "I'm thinkin', General, when ye get there ye'll find him dead 
as a dure nail and shot through the heart." 

I said, "Run on for goodness' sake, as fast as you can. Don't wait 
for me; I'll come as quickly as I may, because he might be only hurt 
and we must not lose him in the darkness." And so we plunged away. 
It was a difficult matter. The ground was very broken; there were 
little burns to cross and peat hags to negotiate. 

I had some falls, and I hurried mightily, but before I could arrive, 
Donald was there, twenty yards before me and after one hurried look 
into the heather, he held his stick aloft in his right arm, and waved 
it triumphantly. 

Then I knew that my glorious crowning experience was to have for 
its exclamation point, for its adorning, for its emphasizing, for its re- 
minder, for its suggestion to recollection until I died, the head of that 
good stag upon my wall at home in America, and I was deeply glad, 
and wholly grateful to the friend who had given me the opportunity, 
and for the good fortune which had attended my amateur and maiden 
efforts at deer stalking in the Highlands. 

A long whistle brought up the two gillies. The deer attended to and 
his head cut off at the shoulders, it was dark. And I carried the head 
out for myself, to where the ponies were, a bit more than a mile, 
through darkness now quite complete and over ground as rough as 
anyone could by extremest stretch imagine. Then for the Lodge upon 
a good pony's back following Donald, who walked by preference, for 
four miles until he branched off to go to his own cottage. 

And here at the parting of the trails I bade Donald, good stalker, 
good sportsman, and good friend, farewell. And so on back to the 
Lodge where ten o'clock saw me sitting at table and trying, — withal, 
with futility, though the listeners were most sympathetic — to convey 
to the Chief and the Warrior the thrilling enjoyment, the passionate 
pleasure of this crowning, culminating glory of my grand shooting 
experience. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



BALNAGOWN AND BIRDS. 



SLIPPING down the hills, gliding over the tops and moving swiftly 
toward the lower ground by the sea in a comfortable motor car, 
well handled, is not a bad way to pass a sunny Sunday morning. 

From Benmore to Balnagown recollection of the good stalks rife 
with lively incidents; blood strongly stirring with healthy vigor and 
reaching out with imagination's hands for the softer though still great 
pleasures of bird shooting, one could not be unhappy, try ever so hard. 

Taking one's ease after days of strenuous highland stalking is not 
an unpleasant way to pass a little time. Nor are the hours wasted 
spent in wandering through fine old woods, well kept gardens or — 
mention it not in the hearing of those who would consider such an act 
iconoclastic — along the flume that bears water from the modern con- 
crete dam to the latest model of turbine and develops electric current 
for the castle or power for the sawmill with which my host amuses 
himself. 

I was told that nine o'clock Tuesday morning would be a good time 
for me to start for a day at walking up partridges. I met Campbell, 
the head keeper at the main door of the Castle, as, equipped for soft 
ground work, I stepped out at that hour the next morning. The motor 
waited and in this we sped away, six miles or so along hedged lanes, by 
woods and fields and farms to a crossroad where we encountered Mor- 
rison, underkeeper, with bulbous nose and rheumy eyes, courteous, 
willing and anxious to please. 

Descending from the motor, we prepared to enter a turnip field which 
was convenient to our near left. The turnips were planted in rows 
possibly two feet apart, the tops reasonably thick, showing variation 
on account of the richness of the soil as they do in America or any- 
where they grow. I was somewhat surprised that the only dog we had 
was a thick-coated black retriever. 

We covered the field by advancing with about fifteen yards between 
us, Campbell on my right and Morrison on my left. They did not 



BALNAGOWN AND BIRDS. 91 

carry guns, but each carried a stick, and Morrison was further decorated 
by a great net game bag swung from his shoulder. We made one 
course through the first field and then back, my finger upon the trigger 
and my pulses leaping as I waited for the startling whir-r-r which 
would mark the breaking of my initial partridge. 

But neither this turn nor the next uncovered birds. We swung into 
another field and took a circuit there without finding game. In a third, 
while beginning to believe the birds had all migrated, one got out as 
hurriedly as a quail, between Campbell and myself, and whipped around 
behind us almost too quickly to be believed. The startled shot which 
I fired at it was a miss. But at any rate, I had seen my first Scotch 
partridge and now felt sure of the existence of such birds. 

The warmer, softer airs seemed more suited to the lowlands and by 
contrast with the fiercer blasts of the heights they were not unpleasant. 
I got a great deal less pleasure out of bird shooting than the pursuit 
of the stag, but actually more thrills. The partridges are grayish 
brown birds, smaller than a prairie chicken or grouse, and considerably 
larger than a bob-white quail. Solid gray upon the breast, and brown 
and slate gray upon the back. 

They broke cover very quickly, flew at high speed, but not always in 
straight lines as, the bob-white does. They are fond of taking to the 
air with a whirling turn which made shooting them very interesting, 
particularly when there was a good wind blowing. 

After the first or second time of flushing, they lie close, the greater 
part of them getting up within twenty yards of the gun. Even at that 
I am willing to subscribe to a statement that it is possible to miss one 
occasionally. 

Campbell and Morrison and I, the three of us abreast, covered turnip 
field after turnip field with clock-like regularity. At the end of a row, 
the man at the unbeaten side would pull up a turnip and drop it to 
mark the edge of the through just finished. From this we moved over 
the necessary distance and thus covered the fields without leaving any 
place actually untouched. 

Birds were plentiful enough to make good sport. At one o'clock, 
when I sat down in the shelter of a hedge for luncheon, I felt that I 
had been having a good day, and turning from refreshment to labor 
again after I had disposed of the delicacies which fell to my share, 



92 CHAPTER XIV. 

I found Morrison laying the birds out in front of me upon the ground 
until he had counted twelve brace. 

In the afternoon we went on in the same way until about four 
o'clock, when, the motor having come for us again, we started back 
to the Castle. I think I shot less well in the afternoon than in the 
morning. I know I saw fewer birds. I had, though, I remember, 
sixteen and a half brace of partridges and two rabbits and a jacksnipe, 
for a total bag. 

The next day I was to have some mixed shooting near the Castle. 
Campbell again directed me and at my request this time he carried a 
gun. We picked up another keeper and took a turnip field quite 
close to the home place. In fact, just through a wood and across a 
small stream from it. 

Here the first bird to get out of his comfortable hiding place among 
the green plants was a pheasant. A royal pheasant of England. Just 
that same bird which on the Pacific Coast of America is called the 
"Mongolian." He is the ring-necked Chinese pheasant, of gorgeous 
plumage if a cock, and of brown modest tones if a hen. The tail is 
long and the bird seems clumsy, but its capacity for flight is astonish- 
ing after it gets under way. It rises rather slowly and makes an easy 
mark when walked up, as I found on this my first experience with 
the Mongolian in Scotland. 

I had shot him in Oregon and in Washington and he seemed like an 
old friend. Later on, as I shall say, I had an opportunity to try the 
pheasant out as a driven bird and I assure you the proposition was an 
entirely different one. However, that must wait its turn for the telling. 

I lunched today on a sloping bank, perfectly sheltered from the wind, 
while the sun shone down with a gentle warmth almost like that of 
summer. In front of me, as I sat, a pleasant meadow, brown with 
autumn's hues, stretched away to a wood which wrapped a little river 
round, itself burned red and brown and yellow by the piercing nip of 
early frost. Beyond the river the wood rose gradually with the hill, 
but not too high or too quickly to rob the scene of its softness. 

A lonesome curlew, seeking God knows what solace from his solitary 
activities, flew high in the air along the course of the stream, punctuating 
his progress with characteristic cries. Gone, he seemed, and out of our 
world, when back he came again, only to turn and pass and repass. 



BALNAGOWN AND BIRDS. 93 

I enjoyed the sight and sound of him, but it seemed a pity not to 
accept his invitation for a shot. I went down to the stream's side and 
planted myself where he must inevitably fly directly over my head if 
he for one time more made the trip over the familiar course from which 
he had not veered a yard in a dozen rounds. 

But he came not here again. Wise bird, or else an unreal one. 
Yet he was rather too tangible for a phantom. The sound of his voice 
would have convinced almost anyone of his corporeal capacity, so it 
must have been his superb intelligence which deprived me of a chance 
to write "curlew" after pheasant, partridge, hare, rabbit; words which 
figured in a description of this day's bag. 

The great variety of shooting for this day made the sport engaging. 
After the turnip field and the collection there of sixteen pheasants and 
a partridge, I sat under the lee of a hill not over fifty feet high and 
waited while the underkeeper went around to drive birds in my direc- 
tion. Campbell was to my right, further on. I could not see much 
in my front, but there was clear space behind me. 

I got the first shot, a hen pheasant coming like the wind. I threw 
up my gun with the old instinctive motion so often used in shooting 
at ducks, and had the satisfaction of seeing my bird crumple in the air 
and fall quite dead. Not much later a magnificent cock broke cover 
in Campbell's front. He was moving mightily for the woods in the 
head keeper's rear and he reached them, too, because the two barrels 
sounding below him passed as a salute rather than an assault. 

Campbell is a good shot, too, but a hurrying pheasant seen only 
when he is squarely over you and in full flight is no easy mark. I was 
rather complacent as I thought of my dead bird and Campbell's two 
misses, and the self-satisfactory feeling was only a little disturbed when 
a cock broke rather quietly on my left and I slam-banged two charges 
from the automatic at him without even quickening his wing motion. 

I observed to myself that that sort of thing just had to happen oc- 
casionally. I know now what it was. I would have been able to say 
then, had I thought very seriously about it. My old fault of aiming 
at the birds as if I were shooting a rifle. 

When a man using a shotgun at a moving object undertakes to 
use special care he just naturally falls into the error of shooting 
directly at the bird. Or if he does hold in front he so often stops 



94 CHAPTER XIV. 

the moving muzzle when he pulls the trigger. A self evident fact, you 
say. Well, I admit it. Stupid of a man to do it. I agree. But just 
the same I find it not such an easy fault to avoid. 

I did the same thing a few minutes later when in response to in- 
structions from Campbell I was moving along the edge of a hill when 
another fine cock broke above me and sailed on to the trees, untouched 
by my two charges intended for him. 

You can imagine by this time I was somewhat earnestly bent upon 
killing the next bird, and in view of that fact it might be well to de- 
scribe the next bird's doings. We climbed the hill and on the level 
above us saw a cottage, marked off from us by a stone wall. Over 
the stone wall I could see turnip tops. 

The keeper found spots for Campbell and I where we waited, while 
he went into the turnips, to beat out what might be there. He com- 
menced at the far side and he had scarcely started when a gulden 
brown hen pheasant flushed in front of us and came actually sizzling 
down half a yard high between Campbell's stand and mine. 

I waited for him and he waited for me until she had passed us both, 
then each of us, with the same impulse, slammed two loads at her 
without avail. I excused myself for that, saying it was not quite a fair 
shot, because I waited for Campbell, and then I was flurried when I 
did fire. 

But hear now about the next bird. This was a grand old cock. 
He came like a meteorite, fairly burning up the air, and he looked as 
big as a turkey. Plenty of time; I saw him a hundred yards away 
from me as he came, and then missed him; blam-blam-blam ! Three 
shots from the automatic, every one behind him. Honestly I felt like 
taking the gun by the muzzle and breaking it over the stone wall. 

You've all been there, unless you are in that never-miss class which 
gets no real pleasure out of shooting anyhow. 

After this, in a few moments, two cocks flushed about the same time, 
and flew toward me, one to come directly over my head, the other to 
my right front, the side away from Campbell. As if I had never 
missed a bird in my life, I swung first upon the one overhead and 
then the one to my right, and they hit the ground, dead birds, not 
three seconds apart. 



BALNAGOWN AND BIRDS. 95 

With as much airy nonchalance as I could muster at the moment, I 
looked over at Campbell, as I carelessly slipped two more shells in the 
magazine. 

Then there were three more single birds coming, all hard crossing 
ones, all going like the wind and all to fall dead at the shot. 

That is what makes shooting an enthralling sport for me. Un- 
certainty. If I could always hit I would always sit — at home, and never 
go shooting. Because I can miss, because I do miss with such ridiculous 
ease, is what makes hitting seem worth while. 

We swung around by mid-afternoon to near where the Chief was 
overlooking some work his men were doing in sodding the parapet of 
the dam. The bag was satisfactory. I have forgotten just how many 
birds, but enough, and the exercise had been sufficient to make a warm 
bath and clean clothes not unwelcome. 



CHAPTER XV. 

NORFOLK PARTRIDGES. 

THE Chief has some partridge shooting in Norfolk. He has a 
sort of sharing arrangement with a friend there by which they 
shoot upon each other's ground. We were going down, he and 
I, to try the Norfolk partridges. Englishmen will tell you that Norfolk 
is the best partridge country in England. 

We traveled from shortly after midday until night to get an express 
and then made an all-night journey to reach King's Lynn. From there 
a waiting motor took us to Compton Hall, where the other man and 
his friends, all Indians, were already assembled. 

Indians? Oh, not native Americans, of course not. Nor natives of 
the land by India's Coral Strand. No ; I mean by that Anglo-Indians ; 
Englishmen who had been in British India as civil service employes 
of the Government there. A Governor, a Chief Excise Officer, a 
Minister of Foreign Affairs, a Financial Official, a Judge and one 
youngster, the son of one of the elders of the party, a subaltern in a 
native regiment, then on duty upon the Afghan Frontier, his leave 
terminating so soon that he would have to start for his station at the 
end of this shoot. 

I believe anyone would agree with me that the English gentleman 
is a fine type of man, and I believe there would be little disagreement 
that the Anglo-Indian is the best type of Englishman. Big and broad, 
and straight and strong, he is a man for any country to be proud of, 
and a companion whose company is to be sought. 

Most of them have had their try at big game; tigers, Indian buffalo, 
large and dangerous game of numerous kinds, and they have traveled 
enough, seen enough, done enough, and been enough, to have reached 
a fixed and satisfactory valuation of themselves and the other men and 
things in the world. 



NORFOLK PARTRIDGES. 97 

Good men to know, these, extremely interesting and not the least so 
when in the evenings after dinner before the grate fire one could 
get them in competition with each other, firing tremendous charges 
from old-fashioned expresses, at well remembered dangerous beasts 
which they saw plainly enough and you could almost see through the 
low hanging savoury murk of the tobacco smoke. 

We had very little changing to do this first morning at Compton 
Hall because we had dressed in the sleeping compartment for the field. 
While we breakfasted the others went on that the schedule might not 
be broken ; we to follow in another motor as we could. 

Norfolk, at the place where we were shooting, comes very close to 
the sea. Not over five miles from there to salt water, though we were 
out of sight of it. For the most part, the country was quite level. 
Beautiful, smooth roads like the best city streets ran between well- 
kept hedges or alongside stone walls or park fences of sheep- and deer- 
tight wire. Old country places, ivy clad churches, the sights and sounds 
and scenes and smells of prosperous English farming lies on every side. 

As we motored nearer to where the guns were sounding I began 
to realize that I had very little definite idea of what a partridge drive 
might actually be like. I had read, of course, as we all have, but having 
no local knowledge or particular reason to remember I had forgotten. 

I had a general impression, shared no doubt by many of my country- 
men, that the way Englishmen and Scotchmen shot partridges and 
pheasants and other game was something scandalous; sort of bird 
murder, as it were, where the creature had no chance, and the man — 
too lazy or unskilful to walk his birds up and shoot them like a gentle- 
man — stood at his ease, or sat comfortably in a pleasant place and 
butchered them by the barrel as they blundered into his vicinity. 

Now this shall be the telling of the true status of partridge driving, 
a typical case, as I believe. 

We found the other motor standing at a crossroad and descended 
to be met by two loaders, that is, men to carry our second guns and 
to load them. This seemed ominous to me, but I was prepared to go 
through the ordeal once, even though it did smirch my character as a 
sportsman. I revised my opinion later as you shall see. 

Pegrim, a trim-built, intelligent young Englishman of twenty-five 
or so, fell to my lot, while a heavy, round-bodied, gray-bearded Britisher, 
" 'oo 'ad been loader for Lord C — , sir — " fell to the Chief. 



98 CHAPTER XV. 

I had the better of this, because my man quite quickly mastered the 
intricacies of the Remington auto-loading shotguns which were my 
weapons, although he had never seen them before, and quite as quickly 
he acquired the utmost facility in being where I wanted him with the 
gun ready for my hand. My friend suffered not a little because his 
garrulous old loader had notions of his own about the shooting; notions 
which unfortunately neither corresponded to those of his principal nor 
to the best usage as anyone would see it. 

The guns were apparently stationed ahead of us down the lane, and 
we started toward them. We could see upon the slope which came down 
from the right to the road — a slope partly covered with stubble and 
the other part made up of plowed ground — a line of men, twenty or 
thirty yards apart, as it were, a widely dispersed skirmish line, ad- 
vancing toward the hedge which marked that flank of the lane to our 
right. 

As we were getting on, a bird flashed through the air to our front 
and swung out to the left with great quickness, but it was not sufficiently 
quick to avoid a shot from the Chief's gun which brought it down dead. 
A second and a third he killed in a similar manner. They were birds 
breaking out from beyond the flank of the waiting sportsmen. I had 
not loaded my gun and did not fire. 

By now we reached the rest of the party, to be designated, so far 
as shooting men are concerned, hereafter as always under such cir- 
cumstances, "the guns." There were eight guns; therefore, eight 
loaders. My companions were all using double guns, as I should 
myself if I were not doing my shooting with one hand. The automatic 
does cut down the effect of the recoil. 

The eight guns of us were numbered off from right to left. One, 
two, three, up to eight. The position of each gun was indicated by 
the man in charge of the day's shooting. Usually we were about 
forty to fifty yards apart, for the most part in a line and either behind 
a hedge or a shoulder of the ground. 

In the first assignment of positions I was Number Eight, that is 
the left flank man. We were facing east, a hedge in our front, then 
a road, then another hedge, then a great wide field; turnips in first, 
stubble beyond; on the far side, almost a mile away, the beaters to be 
seen strung out, about twenty of them. 



NORFOLK PARTRIDGES. 99 

To my left, the Indian financial man, our Norfolk host, and in charge 
of the shoot; the others all to his left. Just a little to the right of my 
front in the hedge was a good sized beech tree, but I could not help 
that. I had been stationed there, could not leave and it was beyond my 
power to move the tree. 

My loader stood close up to my left rear. His instructions were to 
keep an automatic in his hand loaded, with the safety off, and the 
muzzle of the gun pointed up, if I reached back at any time my hand 
would be expected to hold a gun to be grasped by his disengaged hand, 
while he reached me forward the loaded one at the same time. 

Now we could see the beaters moving toward us, and some of them 
were making noises by calling out or beating upon the ground with 
their sticks. Somewhere to the left of the line I heard "Mark Front !" 
and then bang-bang-bang-bang! I caught a glimpse of brown hurtling 
shapes, saw two of them tumbling and I was conscious that I had seen 
my first driven covey of partridges over the guns. 

I wondered if I could hit one bird out of such a lot even from my 
secure stand and with my two automatics. I was soon to find out, 
for the low voice of my loader warned me "here they come, for you, 
sir, in front !" I just had time to sense the movement of what looked 
like very high velocity, slightly elongated, cannon balls sizzling by to 
my left front. 

To save my life I could not find one of the birds in front of me. 
I had to swing 'round as they passed to my rear, then I did get two 
shots off, one of them from a satisfactory holding and the other a 
wild smash at a bird disappearing over a little rise of ground. The 
first shell had killed, the second had missed. 

My suspicion that shooting driven partridges was not a royal road to 
murder grew stronger from this moment. A little later another covey 
came by. This time I got in three shots, but only one bird stayed 
behind. Evidence was accumulating that the gentleman sportsman of 
America who walks birds up and kills them over his dogs, consciously 
superior to his English cousin's brutal hoggishness, has perhaps slightly 
misjudged the case. 

The guns were crashing down the line, but I had my own troubles. 
At the end of the drive or when the beaters had come down to the 
hedge in front of us, I had killed four birds and wounded a fifth 



100 CHAPTER XV. 

and I had fired twenty shells. It was a plain case of "here they come 
and there they go !" 

When the birds got to me they had been upon the wing any distance 
from two hundred to a thousand yards and they were not wildly beat- 
ing the air the while remaining almost stationary as they do when 
freshly flushed. They were moving at a high rate of speed and their 
dodgings and their turnings added to the handicap placed upon one 
by being close to a hedge or some other object obstructing the view 
close to the front, made shooting them good sport and hard. 

Later on in the day in various drives the original impression borne 
in upon me was strengthened and intensified until I came to know from 
my own experience that it was at least fifty per cent more difficult 
for me to shoot driven partridges than to kill the same bird walked 
up in the ordinary fashion. 

It is true the Englishmen do get great bags. On the other hand, they 
are not shooting wild game. The birds which fall to their guns are 
their own, nursed and tended and carefully raised. These men are 
willing to pay and do pay startling sums for good shooting. Scarcely 
a bird, I have been told on many occasions, costs the owner less than 
a pound. 

Five dollars a bird. Very often the cost is less, but the men who 
own these shootings and get their sport in firing at birds upon them, 
increase the number of birds that they may have something to shoot. 
They do not take away from other sportsmen upon unpreserved 
ground any of their rights, and in fact the game which escapes from 
preserves helps to people the free ground. 

One might have some quarrel with Englishmen for shooting so 
many birds in a day, but I suspect the apparent cause for such criticism 
as might lie, would quickly disappear if one were to meet the con- 
ditions on the ground. 

I am quite sure that I did not find Englishmen or Scotchmen or 
Irishmen less inclined to be fair about shooting than my American 
brothers. In fact, I have seen much more game hoggishness exhibited 
in America than I saw in England or Scotland. 

During some of the drives of partridges, hare and rabbits were much 
in evidence. We shot these when we could. 



NORFOLK PARTRIDGES. 101 

We were not giving all our attention to partridges. There was one 
fine long stretch of wood, three-quarters of a mile from end to end, 
and forty yards through which, intelligently beaten, turned out at least 
two hundred pheasants. We did not kill them all. 

Where the guns were out some distance from the trees the birds 
came over from forty to sixty yards high. They took a lot of stopping, 
two and three barrels, all hits, were sometimes necessary to bring down 
a bird, and then very frequently he was a runner. For these the 
retrievers, two or three being held in leash by the beaters, quickly 
demonstrated their usefulness. 

I recall one cock pheasant which did a most extraordinary stunt. 
He broke cover and for some reason, quite obscure, swung around at 
the right flank of the line and started for number one. He received 
the salute from this gun, three barrels. It is true he was high, fifty 
yards. 

Instead of turning then, and making good his escape he came on 
directly over number two, who fired in turn. Then the bird to number 
three, four, five, six and seven, until at eight, who happened 
to be the chief, the bird came down. For myself I think it was sheer 
weight of shot. He was so full of shot he could not fly any further. 

Perhaps I did not say, although I should, that after each beat the 
guns gave way two places to the left. Here, as at most shoots, a 
drawing for places marked the beginning of a day's sport. Thereafter 
the guns held their numbers as they were gained by giving way after 
each beat. 

With the eight guns we gave way two, subsequently with other num- 
bers of guns in the line, we gave way one place, and sometimes two. 
On the first day at Norfolk for instance I began as number eight, and 
then passed at the next beat to number two. 

Returning to those high pheasants which were rocketing out of the 
west woods in grand style and giving us all the shooting anyone could 
possibly want; I told you of the one which traveled from one end 
of the line to the other, from the right end to the left, drawing the 
fire of all until he fell at the end of the line. But I have not told 
you about an experience near this same wood which caused me con- 
siderable misery at the time and threatened for a moment to take away 
all pleasure from my shooting. 



102 CHAPTER XV. 

This same long line of trees was beaten out again toward the end 
of the day, when in a circuit we came back to the vicinity. I recall 
that I was on the immediate right margin, the beaters stretching straight 
through the wood coming on a little to my left; other guns to the left 

of the trees, Judge W thirty yards to my front and thirty yards to 

my right, to pick up such wild birds as should break ahead of the line. 

A hen pheasant flushed immediately in front of me and started 
over the trees to the left. I fired when she was possibly forty feet in 
the air and twenty-five yards to my left front. She fell in front of the 
line of beaters where I knew she would be picked up. 

An exclamation from my loader caused me to look toward the Judge. 
He had his hand to his face and I thought I saw blood coming from 
beneath it. I went quickly to him and found that a single pellet had 
struck his cheek just below the eye and evidently severed a small artery, 
as the blood was flowing very freely. He had picked the shot out with 
his finger nail. 

I was naturally very greatly concerned, and asked if I had shot him ; 
he answered "Yes, but it is not your fault. I saw where you fired 
and you killed your bird. You were not shooting toward me at all." 
In a genuinely sportsmanlike way he made me feel instantly that he 
held me blameless, but I could not quite feel myself so until I had 
gone back to look over the ground. 

What I found very greately astonished me. The man I had hit 
occupied a position almost at right angles, just a little less than a right 
angle to the line of my fire. In direct line with the path of the charge 
of shot from my gun was a large oak tree. On its stem were marks 
of shot, high up. 

No other explanation could be made than that from this hard tree, 
one shot at least, the one which hit the Judge, had ricocheted at an 
apparently impossible angle and penetrated his cheek. 

Our lunch was a jolly function this day, taken in an old fashioned 
country house, presided over by the farmer who owned the farm upon 
which it stood, and leased it to form with other holdings the shooting 
ground where we were taking our sport. When we came to go down 
to the motors for the homeward drive I found myself quite willing 
to suspend operations. We had moved about a great deal from one 
stand to another and the rest provided by the ride home was a pleasant 
thing to contemplate and enjoy. 



NORFOLK PARTRIDGES. 103 

We were whisked over the six miles or so in no time at all. What 
a blessing, a boon, and a convenience a motor is ! How did we ever 
get along without them? I remember very plainly how hard it was 
to get along with them when they first arrived. 

The lights were burning cheerfully in the old hall as we swept up 
the drive and tea and muffins helped to fill the gap from dark to the 
eight o'clock dinner. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



SKY-SCRAPING PHEASANTS. 



WE began the next morning's activities by a most engaging pas- 
sage at arms with some A.-No. 1 top-lofty pheasants. The line 
of guns was extended upon a rolling hillside with a clear view 
to another wood-crowned hill distant about half a mile. It was this 
wood the beaters entered first and from it came grand high birds that 
fell like Lucifer when they were hit. 

Everything was plain and open. You could see the bird break from 
cover, sometimes with excited clucking noises; then you could clearly 
observe him drawing rapidly near. The question whether the shot 
would be yours or that of a man somewhere along the line was next 
to be decided. If the bird came nearer to you than anyone else you 
"Up Gun, And At Him," when he was within range. 

The partridge shooting was not so good this day as the one before, 
largely because the driving was not so well done, different game 
keepers were in charge, but it was a fine day's sport and I had one 
encounter in the afternoon after our luncheon — taken in the root shed 
of another farm — which was as tidy a tight little corner as anybody 
ever saw. 

A slim wood, tall and narrow, half a mile long and forty yards wide, 
ran along a gentle slope downward to plowed ground. The plowed 
ground continued in slope; seventy-five yards from the lower and 
wider corner of this wood was another larger wood. 

The good-natured dispenser of shooting stations put me in the angle 
between these two woods. Nothing which came out came my way 
until the very last part of the beat, when in a few minutes — oh, say 
about two minutes, very full ones altogether — the air seemed full of 
pheasants. 

I rattled my two automatics for all they were worth and was glad 
when I got through with it to realize that I had done better shooting 



SKY-SCRAPING PHEASANTS. 105 

under the stress of the rush and hurry than I would ordinarily do if 
I had plenty of time. They picked up eighteen pheasants and one 
partridge, and a rabbit, in front of me. Where the partridge came 
from I do not know ; he could not have been in the woods, but he started 
by. I remember seeing him swing in front of me, and I thought as I 
pulled, that he was too small for a pheasant. Anyway, I got him with 
the others. 

As far as the rabbit was concerned, of course, rabbits or hares are 
liable to pop out anytime. The only difficulty they spelled to me was 
that I was often afraid to shoot at them for fear of hitting a beater 
or some of the other guns, and when I did shoot at them I was very 
likely to miss. I did better as the days went by. 

The hares are great big fellows, tremendously heavy, rangy brutes. 
They are much esteemed by the people of the country for use upon the 
table. 

Of course, as all the game is sold, the beaters are well pleased to see 
large bags made, and because in many cases their compensation de- 
pends upon the number of head of game killed. When I say the game 
is all sold, of course I mean such game as men do not care to take for 
their own use or give to their friends. 

I remember standing at a gate where two hedges would have joined 
at right angles, but for this break, and having a lively little set-to 
with what almost seemed like a flock of hares. I just had a little nar- 
row patch of ground visible in front of my gun and into this within 
two minutes there appeared several hares. When the beat was over, 
there were seven of the big fellows lying almost one on top of the 
other. 

Our bags in Norfolk I do not remember. I have the record of them 
somewhere, but I know approximately what we got. Something like 
140 brace of partridges, eighty or ninety of pheasants and a little less 
than a hundred hares and rabbits on the first day. 

Not so many partridges nor hares but more pheasants on the second; 
and on the third day, which came after a Sunday of pleasant rest, 
spent mostly indoors, for a rain fell, we ran the partridge score up and 
did practically nothing in pheasants. 

Monday's shoot was not materially different from the others. Some 
features of it perhaps were characteristic. I recall one stand where 



106 CHAPTER XVI. 

the left flank guns were placed with their backs to a village, their 
faces to a hedge, which lay along the road with a hedge on either side, 
and turnip fields beyond. The beaters came from the far side of the 
turnip field and the way those birds would whip over the hedges and so 
close to the houses that one could not fire was a caution. 

Astonishing how rapidly these little partridges could move after the 
start they got by breaking cover a hundred yards or more from the 
guns, and it was still more astonishing to see the way those English- 
men and Scotchmen handled their two double-barreled guns.' 

They actually would get four shots off so quickly that the sound 
was like that made by four shots from an automatic. There are 
English shots so expert that they can get in six shots and kill six 
birds out of a driven covey of partridges. That seems incredible, but 
I am assured by men whose veracity is unimpeachable that it has been 
done and that those who told me have seen it done. 

For my part, I saw some of these men kill four partridges out of a 
covey. Doing my very best and trying the most I could, the best I 
ever did, compass was three. One in front and two behind. A suc- 
cessful Englishman on a quartet of birds will get two in front and two 
behind. They certainly are fast birds as anyone will acknowledge who 
has tried them. 

We lunched on the third day of Norfolk shooting on the sweet turf 
near a big wood, and just before dark the Chief and I hustled into a 
motor and started on a fifty-two mile journey to the nearest point at 
which we could intercept the Scotch express. 

Our lights were not very good and our head light was truly shock- 
ingly inefficient. We got off the road once or twice and we had the 
usual experiences incident to night travel in a strange country, but we 
did not turn turtle and we were in a land where every man was willing 
to give information about the roads if he had it, so we finally drew 
into our station in plenty of time for a good, comfortable, leisurely 
dinner before the night train took us up for Scotland. 

A friend of mine told me since I came back to this country of a thing 
which struck him while motoring in England. He said in some thou- 
sands of miles of such travel he never found a single constable or po- 
liceman who did not know the way to any place he was asked about. 
Besides, it seemed to come straight off the bat, as if he had been 



SKY-SCRAPING PHEASANTS. 107 

standing waiting until you came to tell you the way to go to the place 
you desired to reach. 

My friend remarked that the average countryman was different, in 
that he almost invariably said "Stryte on" when you offered him the 
query, "Which way to Blank?" My experience was the same in every 
particular. That "stryte on" threw us off the track in our night run, 
because of a detour of several miles, more than once. It meant in a 
general straight direction, but it left out of consideration all small 
turns or curves from the straight roads. 

Back to Balnagown again we had a part of one day and all of an- 
other to write letters and overhaul our affairs generally, before the 
three great culminating shooting days arrived. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE DUCKS AT LAST. 

S I approach the task of telling about the Balnagown shooting I 
am wondering how I can best make you realize what I felt 
about it. How perfect it all was. It was so novel, it gave me 
such a number of different sensations, so many of them new. 

I was able to fire hundreds of shots from my shotguns in a day with- 
out even a slight feeling that I was taking shooting from some one 
else, and the companionship offered me by my host, — whose lady wife 
had departed to leave us a Bachelor's Hall, — and his three Scotch 
friends, completed a scenario, a caste and scenery incomparable. 

The three Scotch baronets and the other charming Scotch gentleman 
without title, who were to make up the five guns for this three days' 
shoot were as delightful men as one could encounter in many days' 
travel. They had knocked about more or less all over the world. 
Their views were interesting to me because they had varying and dif- 
ferent viewpoints. They were perfect sportsmen and marvelously good 
shots. 

They told me nine o'clock was the hour for our first day to begin 
and, looking at my watch as I stepped out of the front door, I saw it 
read two minutes scant of that hour. Beyond the round, gray, ivy- 
swathed tower on the right the loaders, alert and expectant, were 
waiting for their principals to come out. Hands to caps, they gave me 
a pleasant "Good morning, Sir." 

I was the first of the guns on the ground. Campbell, head-keeper, 
came soon, and shortly after, the other four. Then we made over to 
where I was told we would have a "bit" of rabbit shooting. This 
rabbit shooting was extra-special, as I found out later. 

Campbell had a way with him when it came to rabbits, his notion 
being that you ought to concentrate as much rabbit shooting in as little 
space of time and ground as you could possibly manage. 



THE DUCKS AT LAST. 109 

Now these rabbits, of course, normally, live in holes or burrows in the 
ground for the greater part. Campbell offered them a nice lunch of 
that particular kind of food of which they were most fond, late in 
the evening, and then when the bunnies were out feeding, he had a force 
of men stop all the burrows. To begin with he had put a rabbit-tight 
fence around the warren, and built piles of brush, one or two feet high, 
perhaps four feet square, at intervals of ten or fifteen feet all over the 
tract. This was a woods-grown enclosure; high trees and many of 
them. 

When it came to the shooting the guns were distributed about 
twenty-five yards apart with three or four beaters between each one, 
and, of course, a loader for every gun was behind his principal. Then 
at a signal, the beaters moving on a line with all, lifted up the little 
heaps of brush with their sticks. 

The conventional result under such circumstances was the popping 
out of one, two, three or perhaps four rabbits and the quick departure 
of the little brown fellows for what they fondly imagined was a place 
of safety in front. Then the guns commenced to talk. 

The line moved forward slowly and the rabbits kept getting up. It 
really did seem impossible that ten guns could fire as rapidly as these 
did. I know my two automatics got hot, and it is a hard thing to get 
an automatic well warmed up. 

Before the line got clear through to the other end of the wood it 
stopped and faced about. All the rabbits which had gone on were 
then in its rear. The beaters slipped off to one side and came in from 
behind. The result was that we had rabbits running from behind us 
to our new front, and by the time they got to the danger zone they were 
usually in full career. 

When a charge of shot struck one of the little speeding fellows he 
would go end over end before coming to a stop. I'm not ashamed to 
tell it, but the Scotchmen beat me all to pieces shooting rabbits. They 
rarely ever missed. I found it easy enough to shoot at the wrong time 
or place. 

When the rabbit fire was over we strung out of the wood and lined 
up, beaters and guns, to cross some rough ground toward what I was 
told would be the lake position for shooting ducks. As we went a 



110 CHAPTER XVII. 

pheasant would break cover there, or a rabbit yonder; a pigeon might 
swing over; a snipe flush in front. Whatever got up within range 
received its tribute of shot and usually went to swell the bag. 

Come to the lake, I found it a body of water about five hundred 
yards long and not over two hundred yards across at the widest point. 
Pine and fir trees stood upon the north end and east side of it. The 
other shores were broken ground, showing only an occasional tree. To 
the north of us the hill rose up to an approximatt height of 200 feet, 
attaining this level at a distance of a half mile or so from the water's 
edge. 

The guns were assigned number one, two, three, four, five, and then 
Albert, who accompanied the Chief, raised a small brass trumpet he 
carried and sounded a shrill, unmusical note. This was answered from 
over the crest to the northeast by three short blasts from a similar 
horn. 

In direct response to the signal and its answer, I caught a move- 
ment on the part of my loader, as he said in excited accents : "There 
they come There they come !" 

Over the tops of the trees, straight from the place where I had 
heard the answering horn, swiftly hurtling to their home lake, came 
five big mallards. Flying high, they were, and though unconscious of 
danger, apparently disposed to settle in the lower part of the lake, while 
the guns were disposed around the upper. In fact, two of the guns 
were on the upper right hand side, one in a boat in the middle of the 
lake, while the last two, numbers four and five, were opposite one and 
two on the left upper side of the lake, as you looked up it. 

The mallards came straight on for the center of the lake, about forty 
yards above the water. They passed a little to one side of number 
three in the boat, to receive his salute. He killed one and wounded 
another. They swung over me, who was number four, climbing, and 
twisting to get away. I took the wounded one and another. One hit 
the water, the other the shore, with a splash and a whop. The un- 
wounded two swung around the lake and came over once more, this 
time fifty yards or more above the guns which eagerly reached 
for them. How many shots were fired on that round I cannot tell, but 
whatever the number, the result was satisfactory, because the two 
birds were soon down. 



THE DUCKS AT LAST. ill 

Scarcely had the five been disposed of until here came three. They 
met the fate of their preceding brethren and were followed in turn 
by four. Then a lone duck. Then five again, and five and four. So on 
for fifteen minutes. Then Albert's horn blew, calling forth its answer 
from the hill. The flight ceased and the guns changed position, number 
one becoming number two, that is all giving way from right to left 
one down. It was hot and heavy while it lasted. Our instructions 
were not to wait for the other man in this kind of shooting, but to fire 
at our own discretion when a bird was in range. 

What happened during the first period was repeated in the second, 
and done over in the third. All of the glamour and charm and seductive 
allure of pass shooting was present in this form of sport. I could not 
shake off the feeling that the ducks would stop coming, that every 
one I saw headed toward the lake was the last one. But they kept on 
and on and on and on until we stopped for luncheon. 

Allen, the butler from the Castle, and his troop of footman satellites, 
had set up trestles and laid a damask-draped table in the open ground, 
roofed only by the gray sky. Here the five hungry sportsmen sat 
down to a piping hot array of luscious viands, which completed by 
some rare old Port and an exceptional quality Havana left us in almost 
too good humor to care for more shooting. 

However, I did not notice anybody flunking a shot when we were 
back on the lake and the ducks had recommenced their descent upon 
us. There was no change in the general program, but those of you 
who have shot ducks will know that there was that infinite variety 
which duck-shooting only can give. 

Every one was different from the one which preceded it. This one 
was high, sixty yards and straight over you; that at a less altitude 
was passing swiftly to your right; this was circling and climbing in 
your rear; the other dipping toward the surface of the lake; the next 
rising straight up with frantically beating wings. 

At four o'clock the horn blew from the hilltop a prolonged blast as 
a token that the last duck had taken wing. There were a few cripples 
to pick up, but only a few, because fifteen or twenty gillies had been 
about the lake all day, gathering from shore and boat the dead and 
wounded ducks. When the bag was laid out upon the shore for count- 
ing in lines of twenty-five we found an even 650. A few more were 
picked up later. 



112 CHAPTER XVII. 

And now you will want to know how all this was possible. You will 
be wondering where the ducks came from and how it came about that 
just when we wanted them they were coming to us. This is the way of 
it: The Chief buys mallard eggs to add to the store he acquires from 
the setting of his own ducks. These eggs are put under hens, and the 
ducklings hatched out are placed in one of three different ponds or 
lakes upon the estate. 

They are fed night and morning, at a point distant about half a mile 
from the home waters. As little fellows, they are, of course, fed fully. 
As they grow old enough to walk well and fly they are gradually coaxed 
further and further up the hill until at last they reach the full dis- 
tance. 

Here, after a time, they are quickly taught to fly back, after the 
morning and evening meal. This becomes a habit with them, and a 
flight always follows a feeding. Sometimes several wide circuits, but 
always a return to the home waters. When the time comes to shoot, the 
large wire netting partial enclosure in which the birds have been feed- 
ing is completed while they are within. Then they are released at the 
signal in lots of from one to five. There you have a description of the 
machinery which guarantees to the sportsman a shot, or as many shots 
as he likes, when and where he desires. 

Exclusive atttention was devoted the next morning to the pheasants. 
Those lengthy-tailed fellows are great woods birds. They love to lie 
up and take hiding in the cover which a forest furnishes. To drive 
them it is necessary to beat out the woods and brush. The line of 
beaters, formed very much as in the partridge shooting in Norfolk, on 
this morning began a forward movement from well beyond the far 
side of a grove of trees. The five guns were stationed in the stubble 
under the lee of a hill. 

It is rather a trying moment, indeed there are several of them, while 
one waits for the first shot of a day. Nothing happened on the initial 
stand to break the serene calm of the early pleasant morning. Not a 
bird came over. A little later in going to a new stand we walked up 
some rough ground and killed a few pheasants as they flushed in front, 
but it was not until the third drive that things began to happen. From 
then on the fun was fast and furious. 



THE DUCKS AT LAST. 113 

I remember one little hot corner with the Chief on number four and 
I on number five. We were about forty yards apart, stationed between 
two groves of trees and the birds driven from one had to pass over 
us on the way to the other. A fold in the hill hid us until the pheasants 
were very nearly overhead. 

They came high and very rapidly, and in large numbers. After about 
ten minutes' shooting seventy pheasants were picked up in front of 
us and there was not one easy shot among them. All good, hard- 
flying birds. Easily twice as difficult to hit as the same birds walked 
up over a dog. 

At luncheon time we had finished the pheasant shooting. We took 
this meal under some big pine trees and, having disposed of it, repaired 
without unseemly delay to a little stream which had been the home of a 
small lot of mallards, about seventy-five. These, when released from a 
high hill, came to us on swift wings and at a great elevation. Fly as 
high and as hard as they might the five guns eventually disposed of 
practically all of them. 

Then we repaired to a little green meadow girt round by trees, in 
the curve of a second stream where we waited the coming up of another 
lot of ducks. There were three hundred odd of them and they gave 
us many fine, high sporting shots. We had enough, but only just 
enough when the horn signaled the news that the last of them had been 
loosed. 

The next and last day of the whole British shooting experience was 
devoted to a contest with the fast flying qualities and wily ways of the 
Scotch partridge. We drove in a big automobile in the morning to a 
point on our host's land some eight miles from the Castle. Here we 
found Campbell with a long line of beaters waiting for us. 

The first field yielded only one small covey and that swung to the 
side so that it lost but two birds from its ranks. The next beat was 
rather a strange one. The wind was blowing from the southeast; we 
were on the east margin of a turnip field; it was expected the birds 
would go with the wind, so the guns were strung out in Indian file and 
instructed to advance along the north line of the field, keeping such a 
pace that the rearmost man would be fifty yards in advance of the line 
of beaters, who, starting at the east margin of the field, were to come 
through, sweeping it from the east to west by a line extended from its 
north to its south boundaries. 



114 CHAPTER XVII. 

The plan worked well enough and we got some birds, but I recall very 
distinctly a drainage ditch with a barbed wire fence by its side and 
crossed by another, which interposed during the progress of this ad- 
vance. Some of the guns were able to swing over by the wires ; some 
made it by a long running jump; but when I approached, eyeing the two 
feet or more of water with considerable disfavor, partridges were get- 
ting up momentarily and coming toward us. I could not delay the line 
and I had to cross, so I waded in and out, taking two large, capacious 
hunting boots full of very cold water with me. 

After that we swung along in line, guns and beaters together, to a 
piece of waste land which had been allowed to grow up to high grass. 
There were many partridges here and some pheasants ; but few got 
away. The percentage of hits of flushed birds as against the percent- 
age of hits made on driven birds works out about the same every time. 
Very few flushed birds escape. If you get half of the driven birds you 
are doing well. 

There were a great many partridges here. Quite as large a number 
as I saw in Norfolk. We came finally to a famous old patch of gorse 
which had been left as a nesting and hiding place for the birds. Here 
they were in force. We drove this patch with good success, then 
drove a turnip field not far away and the birds made for the patch, 
then we drove it again. In all, I think four drives were made through 
this one small tract of ground, each yielding plentitude of birds. 

Then we swung out over the fields further on and pursued the tactics 
previously described in the Norfolk shooting. That is, the guns were 
stationed along one side of a field in a covered position and the beaters 
attempted to put the birds over or near to them. We had a good bag 
that night; about 300 birds, I think, and motored back to the Castle, 
satisfied with the sport, if not entirely content as individuals — I speak 
for myself alone — with the quality of our shooting. 

That night the party broke up, and the next morning I started for 
England and home. So this is the end of my Scotch and English shoot- 
ing experiences in the year 1911. Thave tried to tell of them in such a 
way as to pass on to you some of the pleasure which they afforded me. 

If I have succeeded in doing that I am satisfied, because the pleasure 
which I had was so great that no one else could have any of it without 
a distinct addition to the sum total of human happiness. So endeth 
stories of some shoots or the chronicles of a gratified gunner. 



JUL &S 1912 



